Cat Lovers Rejoice! New TLD .CAT Approved (in 2005) - Who Knew?

By Zak Muscovitch. When I saw that a domain name dispute had been filed with WIPO for Nespresso.cat, I thought maybe the .CAT was a typo. 

In fact, it turns out that .cat is  is a sponsored top-level domain intended to be used to highlight the Catalan language and culture. 

With all the daily announcements about  new GTLD's  these days, one could be forgiven for incorrectly believing that ICANNN had perhaps made an announcement that we all missed. In reality however, this TLD was approved in 2005 and there have been a handful of domain name disputes already:

WIPO Case Number	Domain name(s)	Complainant	Respondent	Decision
D2013-0860	nespresso.cat	Société des Produits Nestlé S.A.		Case active
D2010-2202	bellaterra.cat	Entidad Municipal Descentralizada de Bellaterra	Francesc Pérez Torres (SROW - 1385681)	Complaint denied
D2007-1196	caixalaietana.cat	Caixa D'Estalvis Laietana	Victor Manuel Pendas Suarez	Transfer
D2007-1119	marieclaire.cat	MARIE CLAIRE ALBUM	Narcis Subils Pages	Transfer
D2007-0784	bmw.cat	Bayerische Motoren Werke AG	Carlos Requena Algarra	Transfer
D2007-0168	coeic.cat coeic.com coeic.info coeic.net	Col.legi Oficial d’Enginyers Industrials de Catalunya	Col.legi Oficial d’Enginyers en Informàtica de Catalunya (COEIC)	Complaint deni

• There are apparently some registration requirements for this TLD, such as these ones according to Wikipedia:

• already have content in Catalan published online.

• have access to a special code (sometimes called ENS), issued during special promotions or by agreements with certain institutions.

• develop activities (in any language) to promote the Catalan culture and language.

• are endorsed by 3 people or 1 institution already using a .cat domain name.

But as Wikipedia points out, it has also been used for some "cat hacks" such as lol.cat, cypto.cat, and nyan.cat.