The Brazilian Domain Name Registry, the entity responsible for the registration and maintenance of Brazilian domain names, will make available registration of domain names under the extension .rio.br, as of January 17, 2018, at 12 pm.
The registration of .rio.br domain names will be exclusive and restricted to (i) legal entities incorporated in Brazil with head office, subsidiary, franchisees or licensees in the city of Rio de Janeiro; and (ii) individuals with formal address in the city of Rio de Janeiro.
It will not be allowed to register domain names which (a) consist of names of neighborhoods, places, events and traditions of Rio de Janeiro, such as “Copacabana”, “beach”, “Carnival”, among others; (b) are composed by generic words, such as “hotels”, “bars”, and others; (c) consist of federal, state or county public services, such as “subway”, “water”, “security”; and (d) are detrimental to the image of Rio de Janeiro.
Some domain names formed by known marks will be reserved and become available in the next release procedure, in order to try to avoid misappropriation by third parties. Nonetheless, it will only be possible to know which domain names will be allocated to this specific proceeding when applying for registration.