.eu domain name and EU trade mark: which comes first?

EURid and the EUIPO (European Union Intellectual Property Office) have had a successful collaboration for many years. Recently we carried out a research on the relationship between the .eu domain name and the European Union Trade Mark (EUTM) registrations.

A sample of 5000 EUTMs were randomly picked and checked against .eu domain name registrations, to see which were registered first and if the owners could be matched. The outcome of this particular sample showed that 56% had already a corresponding .eu domain name, out of which 77% had the .eu domain name registered before the EUTM registration, and 23% did the domain name registration after.

When it comes to comparing the respective holders, the findings show that the data of the EUTM and the .eu domain name holder matched fully in 28% of the cases. In the remaining cases the information did not match completely, which could mean that the EUTM and .eu do not belong to the same entity, or that during the application process different contact data was used.