Munich — Bavarian citizens, associations and organizations will soon be able to express and underline their Bavarian identity by registering their Internet address under .BAYERN, the new web address for Bavaria. Thousands of new names will be available to Bavarians in addition to the existing .de or .com domain names.
“Bavarians are proud of the their homeland and heritage, and our position as the Internet leaders in Germany. Bavaria deserves to take its rightful place on the Internet with .BAYERN, an Internet address for Bavarians,” said Bayern Connect CEO Caspar von Veltheim. “The new address will give Bavaria visibility and prestige, and will encourage innovation and new business opportunities.”
Bayern Connect GmbH, with support of prominent Bavarian organizations, will apply to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) to run .BAYERN. ICANN will begin accepting applications for new top-level domains in the beginning of 2010. Examples of the new names include www.hotels.bayern , www.allianz.bayern, www.schmidt.bayern.
Bayern Connect wants to represent Bavarian interests on the Internet. In pursuit of that effort, Bayern Connect has already presented its project to the Bavarian State Government and aims for close cooperation with the government. Bayern Connect has already won the support of prominent Bavarian organizations. In addition, Prince Leopold of Bavaria, an enduring advocate for the preservation of Bavarian traditions, is serving as Senior Advisor and supporter of the effort. He says: “With .BAYERN, Bayern Connect will give Bavaria a home on the virtual Internet.”
.BAYERN is already in compliance with the strict technical requirements needed to win approval from ICANN. “We need a strong and stable technical infrastructure to take our place among existing top-level domains,” said von Veltheim. “We are therefore using the Espresso platform, which powers over a dozen country-code top-level domains, is used by ICANN worldwide to demonstrate security best practices, and can deliver domain names for Bavarians at a fraction of the cost of other solutions.”
Bayern Connect is developing a strong policy and legal framework to protect trademark holders. Intellectual property attorney Dr. Andreas Schulz states, “Trademark owners are entitled to a fair and transparent system by which the domain names are allocated. I will help Bayern Connect develop policies that will assure this.”
As a Bavarian business, Bayern Connect will donate a substantial portion of the annual registration revenues to Bavarian charities and cultural organizations. “Bavarians will make .BAYERN succeed, and therefore we will give back to Bavaria,” said von Veltheim.
Bayern Connect GmbH is based in Munich, and the group’s innovative plan has attracted significant funding from within Germany and from the United States. For more information, see http://www.bayernconnect.com or www.bayernconnect.de.