Germain Maureau at the Afnic Consultative Committee (CCUBE)
[19/10/2026]
The .FR domain, a national top-level domain and the world’s seventh-largest ccTLD by volume of domain names, is not managed by a company but by an association: Afnic. The association regularly brings together its members – representatives of users and registrars – to discuss developments in the French domain name system with its teams.
As an accredited registrar and member of the association, Germain Maureau took part in the second CCUBE 2026 meeting on Thursday 15 October 2026.
This dual expertise – technical and legal – enables us both to closely monitor technical developments relating to .FR and to defend the interests of trademark owners.
A key highlight of this second 2026 edition was the forthcoming delegation of three overseas domain extensions to Afnic:
- .MQ for Martinique
- .GP for Guadeloupe
- .GF for French Guiana
Afnic will thus manage nine top-level domains (.fr, .re, .pm, .tf, .wf, .yt, .gf, .gp and .mq), all available via Germain Maureau.
Beyond the technical issues, these delegations require trademark owners to be cautious on two points:
👉 the specific procedures for the forthcoming allocation of two-character names within these extensions,
👉 the application of the list of reserved terms, some of which may correspond to existing trademarks, in accordance with Afnic’s legal framework.
By planning ahead for these new extensions, you can avoid having to retrieve a domain name in the future that has been registered by a third party under the ‘first come, first served’ principle.
Would you like to secure your trademarks with these new extensions or check whether they are among the reserved terms? Our domain name and online trademark protection team will be happy to assist you.