Eurid's decision to act over .eu domain name stockpiling has been applauded by registrars

The recent decision by .eu domain name operator Eurid to suspend 74,000 .eu addresses, after claiming they had been registered unfairly, has won support from industry.

Eurid announced in July that it is suing 400 registrars for allegedly “warehousing” - speculatively buying up .eu domains to resell at a higher price. Registrars are only permitted to purchase names on behalf of their customers.

Registrar 123-reg, the domain registration group of ISP Pipex, said that Eurid’s actions were to be applauded because warehousing is becoming an increasingly common practice.

“The practice of stockpiling is difficult to police due to the nature of the internet, as it is not immediately clear where the registrant is located,” said Jarrod Robinson, product and development director at 123-reg. “Every effort should be made to eliminate this practice from the industry.”

Kate Withers, a solicitor in the IP department at Eversheds, also supported the suspension. “Eurid wants to maintain .eu as a top-level domain, and its actions are certainly in the interests of legitimate registrars and domain-name holders,” she argued. “Eurid has a strong case to put forward.”

Withers added that the situation was not down to any failure on Eurid’s part to protect against unfair registrations. “Eurid came up with quite a rigorous process for registering the names, but .eu addresses have been proving so valuable that some parties have been pulling out all the stops to circumvent the rules,” she said.

Proceedings will begin in Brussels in October. Eurid said that its decision to suspend the names was taken to protect the value of the .eu domain and that it would like to make the names available again to interested parties.