.si and brand protection: what to decide while the extension is in demand

A month ago, .si was a quiet country domain. Slovenia has run it for years, and most people never had a reason to think about it. In September, according to the registry, new registrations went from about 3,500 in August to more than 46,000.

If you own a brand, the question is simple: do you need a .si name? Some of you do, most of you do not, and you should decide on purpose, not in a panic.

What is happening, in four dated facts

I will keep the facts few, and I will put a date on each one, because this is moving every day.

• The registry, Register.si, reported 3,515 new registrations in August and 46,066 in September, as reported by CircleID. That is about thirteen times as many.
• On 1 October the same source reported 241,459 .si domains in total, and 13,603 registrations in the previous 24 hours.
• Reporting links the rise to the announcement that US federal agencies would use the term "Super Intelligence", abbreviated SI, instead of AI. The abbreviation matches Slovenia's country code. The registry was careful about pinning the whole rise on one event.
• The registry advised holders of trademarks, slogans and company names that do not yet have a .si domain to register one (Euronews). Reports also quote the registry as seeing speculative buying alongside genuine use.

The total will be higher by the time you read this. Use the registry's own counter for the number of the day, and not this post.

Why a brand owner should care

Think of a street where one shop gets a good review. The week after, everyone wants the shop next door, and the people who own the corner unit suddenly get letters. Nothing happened to the corner unit. It is the same unit it was last month. But more people are looking at it.

That is .si right now. Your brand did not change. But a country code that matches a popular abbreviation now attracts buyers who have nothing to do with Slovenia, and some of them are speculating, and some of them will register names that look like yours.

Two questions

I find it easiest to split the decision in two.

The offensive question. Could a .si name support your brand, your product or an AI plan you already have? If your product name or tagline plays on SI, the answer might be yes. If not, the honest answer is probably no.

The defensive question. Do you hold the .si version of the names that matter, the ones you already protect under .com and .ai? And if somebody else holds them, do you know who?

Notice that the second question is the one that matters for brand protection, and it is the cheaper one to answer. You do not need to buy anything to find out who holds a name.

What to check first

1. List the names you already protect. Start with your exact brand name and your main product names.
2. Look each one up under .si. Is it free, registered, or on sale?
3. If it is registered, note who holds it and whether the site is live, parked or empty.
4. Check how your own .ai and .com names are set up. A look-alike .si name is an easy way for someone to copy your look.
5. Write down what you found, with the date.

Security researchers have also written about the cybersecurity side of the surge, so it is worth asking your security team whether look-alike .si names are on their watch list.

Register, monitor or ignore

I would not register every variant. The list gets long quickly, and every name comes back for renewal next year, whether anyone remembers it or not. (Domains are polite that way. They always send the bill.)

Here is a simple rule:

• Register the exact brand name and the product names you already protect elsewhere, if the price of holding them is small next to the cost of losing them.
• Monitor variants, typos and brand-plus-keyword combinations. Watching them costs less than owning all of them.
• Ignore the rest, and set a budget so that "the rest" does not grow every week.

A study of how Fortune 500 companies register defensively found that swapping the TLD is one of the most common moves. That study came out before this surge, so it describes a habit, not this event. I will go through the study in a separate post.

If someone else already holds your name

Do not rush. Check who the holder is, whether the name is in live use, and keep screenshots and dates. Then talk to a trademark lawyer before you contact the holder or pay anyone, because the way you approach it can change what happens next. The registry has its own rules for disputes, and they are worth reading before you decide anything. And never pay a stranger on a "buy now" page without a safe way to hand over the name.

This is not legal advice. It is how I would approach it.

Write it down

A decision that lives in one person's head expires when that person leaves. Put the .si decision on one page: the names, the budget, the owner and the renewal date. Add it to your list of approved defensive names and to your client records if you work for clients. Then review it in 90 days, because by then the picture will look different, and so will the price of acting.

Our posts on approved defensive domain lists, client domain records and the 90-day renewal review cover the process, and defensive domain administration explains where a registrar fits in. For the news behind .si, read the earlier post on the super intelligence speech. A registrar registers and renews names. It does not monitor for infringement and it does not give legal advice, and there is a separate post on that handoff. The page for brand protection teams has more.

Sources

• CircleID, .si registrations surge after US shift to "Super Intelligence"
• Euronews, Trump's AI rebrand sparks unexpected rush for Slovenian .si domains
• Register.si, the registry's own counter and statements

If you want to talk through your own list, write to me in the chat on the website.

/Thomas