Although one does not have to be a resident before the domain
name is issued. Your company must have a company representative
on Guam to reference as the administrator of the domain.
This is the only way to ascertain that your application is
legitimate.

Ha'anen Yu'us and HAFA Adai!

Presented below are the most frequently asked questions posed
by applicants of the .gu domain. The Guam Network Information Center
is the Sole Source for registering Guam Domains. It has no ties to
any commercial registration service companies.
The answers are not fixed and will change.



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3) Do you have any dispute resolution policy with respect
to disputes over domain name registration?

On Aug 1 1950, the Organic Act was passed by Congress
and signed by President Truman issuing Copyright and
Trademark control to the territorial government of Guam.

Empirically, many domain names issued thus far are
trademark related. Ideally, the OWNER of the TRADEMARK certificate
owns the DOMAIN NAME. Whenever domain ownership contention between
parties arise, we desire the dispute to be resolved within the
applicant's corporate entity or via the judicial system before
the processing cycle concludes.

Parties who have been issued usage of a domain name shall
indemnify the Univ of Guam, the Government of Guam, its servants
or agents and shall hold its servants or agents harmless against
any loss, damage, liability, claim or expense resulting from
claims asserted by any party regarding ownership or right to the
use of a domain name under the .gu delegation.

Further, public law 23-62 Dec 5, 1995 creates
the mechanism for trademarks and tradenames to be registered
via the Dept of commerce on Guam (671)735-0322 Fax (671)477-9031.
By having a Guam rep who can apply for legal trademark protection
with the Dept of Commerce, the issue of owning a domain name
trademark can be settled legally without ambiguity.

One of the main reasons for accepting the TLD delegation
is that by specializing in this region, we are most able to
comply with regional legislation which affects domain issuance.
For example, the dominant language in this territory is 'Chamoru'.
There has been practices in the past where other TLD's have issued
domains to local businesses utilizing the Chamoru dialect with no
safeguards that the domain names may hold sacred or sacrilegious
meanings to the populace.

CHAMORU NAMES
If a Domain uses a Chamoru-Guamanian name, public Law 10-138,
17-10 requires that you consult with the Guam Place Name
Commission regarding the appropriateness of your chamorro
domain name. A chamorro word cannot be owned. However, if no
objections are are raised by the appropriate agencies, we
will assure that your name uniqueness and domain name will
not be claimed by anyone if you employ it in the service
of the People of Guam.

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4) Do you conduct any trademark search before registering
a domain name?

We crosscheck trademarks with a publication printed by
the Guam Dept of Commerce. We have no
affiliation with the Department of Commerce where
trademarks are issued. We do however, comply with court
mandates if trademark-domain ownerships are in dispute.

We have received requests from companies worldwide
who apply to protect their trademarks and not necessarily
because they desire a domain name. We humbly solicit your
understanding by saying that this is not the correct venue
to protect your tradename and service marks. Please register
your trademarks with the Guam Dept of Commerce.
We also honor holders
of Guam Trademark certificates.

Contentions for tradename disputes should be
resolved before an application is submitted.

If trademarks are being claimed
by corporations,it follows that securing a Tradename Certificate
from the Dept of Commerce will be a decisive factor in settling
name disputes.

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5) Is it sufficient to register the domain in domain .gu
format (for example, coke.gu) or there is a requirement to
register a name with the second level qualifer (for example,
coke.com.gu or coke.net.gu)
The latter is true. A second level qualifer will be needed.

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6) If there is a requirement to have second level qualifier,
what qualifiers are available?

Normally, applicants register under the second level qualifers:

.com.gu commercial
.edu.gu education
.net.gu Major network support centers
.gov.gu Government
.org.gu Nonprofit organizations. You know if you are an org if
your hold a letter from Internal Revenue Service granting
tax exemption under Section 501(c),(d) or (e) of the
Internal Revenue Code. Or have certification from the Dept
of Revenue and Taxation that you are a nonprofit organization
under the laws of Guam.

Thus far, these are the only domain suffixes which we support.


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7) Do you have any qualification policies (one has be resident or
company registered in your country, one has to have trade mark
registered to get it registered as a domain name, etc.)?

One must be a resident before the free domain
name is issued. Your company must have a company representative
on Guam and registered with the Guam Revenue and Taxation Dept.

When you register your trademark with the Guam Dept of Commerce
no entity can claim your tradename as a domain.

We genuinely desire to assist the applicant in activating their
domain.

We require that the applicant possesses two DNS
servers anywhere in the world which will advertise their
domain name. We perform nslookup on the servers listed on their
application to ascertain that their tables are operational and
correct.

Although 6000 miles from the continental
U.S., Guam is still part of the United States. Consequently,
we do not desire to compete for or take users away from other
U.S. domain services. We were delegated the .gu domain to
specialize within this pacific region and to quickly address local
legal/cultural sensitivities and domain inquiries which would
otherwise contribute in congesting traffic at INTERNIC
{which we have utmost respect for}.

Issuing domain names entails responsibility of assuring that
the applicant has protected himself/herself from having a third party
challenge their ownership of that domain. We defer to the courts to
arbitrate such disputes.

It is logical that the applicant should own the tradename if the
tradename is incorporated into domain name. For every application,
we fax, email, write or visit the local Guam representatives
of the corporation [who with certainty already applied for
trademark/tradename certificates with the Guam Dept of Commerce]
for authentication of information. This is our only means to
validate the veracity of any application for domain
activation. The responsibility for accountability will reside
with local representatives of the company. The representatives
need not be residents of Guam.

====================================

Question: Is there a cost to register under .gu domain? If so,
how much and how is billing and payment made?

There is no cost incurred for registering
domains for .gu and no plans for billing or charges
in the future. Domain registration is a public service
addressing the needs of users on Guam and other islands.
However, by being free, we do not desire to compete for or
take users away from other domain services. With humble
apologies, we realize that with finite manpower at this juncture,
we establish some parameters for DNS name activation.
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Question: What is the average time to register a domain name?
(from receiving an application to approval )

The completion cycle is actually dependent upon the applicant
and the applicant's clients. We are bound by a policy to
assure that that the applicant owns the tradename if the
tradename is incorporated into domain name. If you are a proxy
for a major corporation,we will contact the management of the
corporation for authentication of information. The OWNER of the
TRADEMARK owns the DOMAIN NAME whereas the proxy who is applying
on behalf of the corporation will be the technical contact. The
corporation must exist on Guam and registered with the Dept of
Revenue and Taxation. If their
tradename is registered with Guam Dept of Commerce, we will
contact those representatives for authentication. If objections
arise, we desire them to be resolved within the applicant's
corporate entity before the the processing cycle concludes.
Empirically, we've observed international companies
applying for domain names primarily to secure their tradenames
against claims by others. We are sympathetic to these branding
issues but we also require:

Please do not activate your com.gu or net.gu etc. tables on
your DNS servers until we confirm that it is clear to do so.
Afterwards, we will also perform nslookup on your servers for
verification. P.S. Please do not reference our primary
guam servers on your tables since the world root servers will
provide that info to your DNS servers.

When an application
is received, for actual DNS table activation on our servers,
local presence or representation on Guam should exist.
To have us activate
your domain on our DNS servers, the responsibility for
authenticating the validity of corporate representation will
reside with your company on Guam.
We will activate your domain on our tables when a
local contact is identified and is accountable for answering
questions regarding the domain. Please
don't create a DNS table on your DNS server for the applied
domain unless a local contact for your company is ascertained.
====================================================================
Notification: If you are registering a government
.gov.gu domain, please contact the
government consortium at govtguam@ns.gu

Notification: If you are registering an educational
.edu.gu domain, please contact the
public educational consortium by emailing
nguyen@uog9.uog.edu and rev5@uog9.uog.edu
On a separate note, there exist a Catholic
School Network.

=====================================================================

Question: How long is a domain name valid? One year, longer?

Cognizant that domain names exist dynamically, we review
them annually. We will attempt to ascertain that the servers
for the domains are still up/running and their merits
in the service of the people of the territory.
We will take all measures to contact the owners of the
Domains locally should any questions arise.
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Quest: On the template for registration, it tells me to e-mail the
form to 3 different people. Must I email to all of them, or
is one sufficient?

It is advisable to carbon copy your application to the people on
the list. Being a consortium of many agencies, some members may
be off-island, attending regional projects, on vacation, or ill.
Since we are over 6000 miles from the U.S. west coast,
the undersea fiber cable or even routers might fail. By sending it
to different people on different lines, your application at least
reaches someone.
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Question:Must a registering org. have an ISP in Guam or
a server located in Guam to register a domain?

The location of the ISP is not relevant {as of this moment 27Apr2000}.

a.) If your node is physically on Guam we will assist in processing
your request. Entities who apply normally own their
communication lines on Guam.
If your tcpip subnet is registered to you by internic,
apnic, ripe or the network information center of your nation, then
all is well.
If your tcpip address or tcpip subnet is owned by or is part of
the CIDR block of addresses owned by your Internet Service Provider,
please supply us with your provider's email address. We desire to
courteously apprise the provider and ascertain if we are working
within the parameters of the provider's policies. We also expect
providers or the owners of your ip address to have firewalls
on their net. In the course of
verifying the functionality of your DNS, we do not want to set off
alarms on your provider's net and be misidentified as intruders.
Some ISP also view their role as applying for domains on behalf
of their customers.

If your user node is on Guam, it is permissible that your ISP and
DNS server be in another country.
You may be physically on Guam, but your DNS server may be at CONUS
{continental U.S.} or another country for example.

b.)If you are not physically present on Guam and have affiliation
with an agency in the Government of Guam or schools or nonprofit
orgs on Guam we will assist in processing your registration.
Just provide the Guam local address and Guam contact person on
your application.

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Quest:Is there any limit to the number of domain names one
organization may register (for example, one org has several
products, tradenames)?

The number of potential tradenames may be unwieldy that it
may not be realistic to create domains for all of them.
The question of utility of the domain names will be raised
if the names are being used for tradename protection rather
than for corporate communication or presence.
This has to be taken on a case by case basis. To protect your
tradename on Guam, it is best to seek a Guam Certificate of
Registration with the the dept of Commerce [in addition to
registering your tradename with the U.S. Dept of Commerce].
Please ask your representative on Guam to perform this for you.
We are fully aware of your concerns and we also honor tradenames.

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Question: How does one register a tradename or trademark on Guam?

The Guam Network Information Center has no association with the
Dept of Commerce nor with the issuance of trademark
registration certificates.

Please be advised that the registration of Trademarks, Patents
and Copyrights in Guam is the responsibility of the Department
of Commerce.


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Question: What are other people's views on domain names and
trademarks?

AN ARTICLE ON "MIDRANGE SYSTEMS" Nov 10, 95 issue relates:
Some companies and individuals are registering names simply to
stake a claim now. While that may seem prudent, it isn't something
the company that manages InterNIC likes very much. "As far as
people registering names to preserve them, that is not consistent
with the spirit and intent of the registration process." says
David Graves, Internet business manager at Network Solutions Inc.
of Herndon, Va., which runs the InterNIC's registration process
under contract with the National Science Foundation. "We encourage
people to apply for names they want to use, not to protect their
trademarks."
When trademark problems do arise, the InterNIC does its best to
stay out of the dispute. "If we are present with credible evidence
that a third party has a trademark, we will ask the domain name
holder if they can provide equal evidence of a trademark," Graves
explains. If the current holder has a trademark, it's up to the
courts; if not, then NSI will ask them to change their name. "We
don't want to get into the relationship between trademarks and
domain names, and in that area the law is silent.




Question: How does a school qualify for a special edu.gu domain?


In general, the domain registry is divorced from rendering decisions
on an applicant's suitability for .edu.gu qualification. The determination
is rendered by the applicant's success in achieving accreditation from
an accreditation body approved by the U.S. Department of Education.

Institutions that do not already hold a name in the .edu.gu domain are
eligible to receive a domain designation if they fulfill both
requirements 1. and 2. below:
1. If the learning institution has physical presence on Guam.
They do not have to be post secondary institutions since
most schools (below college level) on Guam are also accrediated by
WASC or the Western Association of Schools and Colleges.
Institutions are registered with the Revenue and
Taxation. If additional govtguam requirements manifest
at a future date, we will honor them.
2. If they are institutions that are institutionally
accredited, i.e., the entire institution and not just particular programs,
by agencies on the U.S. Department of Education's list of Nationally
Recognized Accrediting Agencies

http://www.educause.net/edudomain/eligibility.asp#regional
These include both "Regional Institutional Accrediting Agencies" and
"National Institutional and Specialized Accrediting Bodies." Note that
institutional accreditation is required for .edu.gu eligibility; program
accreditation is not sufficient.