13 July 2007—During the Sunrise period last year questions arose surrounding EURid's decision to accept applications for domain names which were based a prior right a name which included an ampersand ("&") or other special characters. Once that name was converted into a domain name (without the ampersand) it became a word for which others also showed an interest. Now a Belgian court has decided that EURid's interpretation of the Sunrise rules (to accept ampersand names) was indeed correct.

The case centred around article 11 of EC Regulation 874/2004 which provides that where the name for which prior rights are claimed contains special characters, spaces or punctuation marks, these should be eliminated entirely from the corresponding domain name, replaced with hyphens or, if possible, rewritten. Certain parties felt however that EURid should have rejected the ampersand applications since they believed the applicant was not free to eliminate the ampersand if the option of rewriting or replacement existed.

With the ruling the Court has now confirmed EURid's initial decision stating that the applicant was completely free to choose one of the three options mentioned in the article. It was not for EURid to question this choice.