Website Domains

Effective management of domain names for the internet and intranet requires:  

• A standard registration process
• Unambiguous, responsible and continuous ownership of domains by the relevant Bayer company
• Monitoring of domain renewal and expiry
• Competent handling of associated legal and trademark issues

The Domain Registration Process

The process is documented in directive 'Domain Management' (link available only on the Bayer Intranet). 
 
Possible domain names should be considered and requested as soon as the idea for a trademark or a specific campaign starts to evolve. Valuable names and especially common phrases are often already registered by other parties in the hope of being sold later for a big profit. Failing to check on the availability of domain names sufficiently in advance carries the risk that the domains may have already been registered, or are even in use. The Domain Name Management Team can help reduce this risk by checking on the availability of any desired domain name. 

Domain registration

Domain Name Management Team

According to the directive 'Domain Management' (link available only on the Bayer intranet), the Domain Name Management Team is charged with the management of internet domain names such as ordering and renewal, DNS configuration and maintenance of a central database of all Bayer internet domain names.

Legal Issues

For trademark and related issues please contact Petra Luh at the Global Trademark Center, petra.luh@bayer.com.
 

Domain Name Spam

Domain name spam refers to e-mails from external companies encouraging the registration of domains to protect intellectual property rights.

Domains for all business areas, corporate functions, business services and affiliate companies must be registered and managed using MIRA. The costs incurred are charged centrally. The costs for design, development and technical implementation remain the sole responsibility of the website owner.

Register or manage an internet domain using MIRA. Before you can register any domain with MIRA you must already have been approved to do so. General inquiries about domains should be addressed to Domain Management Support.

Domain Registration and Change Requests

For intranet domains please refer to the intranet domain strategy.

Domains should be of the form bayer.[tld], (bayer.co.[tld] or bayer.com.[tld] in some countries such as Britain, Brazil or Japan)

The Bayer brand strategy avoids the public presentation of organizational structure.

Bayer brands are registered as trademarks and, thus, protected against infringement under the provisions of trademark law. Domain name registration plays an important role in increasing brand recognition and awareness. This can also prevent damage to Bayer's trademarks incurred through domain squatting by third parties.

Strong brands such as Aspirin™, Adalat™ and Confidor™ may have their own relevant global and regional domains:

• [domain].[tld]
• aspirin.com, aspirin.de
• bepanthen.com, bepanthen.nl
• adalat.com, adalat.br

Product sites can also be registered as subdomains of the relevant Bayer domain in the form of [subdomain].bayer.[tld]:

• aspirin.bayer.[tld]
• bepanthen.bayer.[tld]
• adalat.bayer.[tld]

In accordance with the design rules, topic or campaign sites should follow either the corporate naming strategy for corporate topics, or the product naming strategy for product campaigns.

Corporate topics

• [subdomain].bayer.[tld]
• career.bayer.com
• research.bayer.com
• animalstudies.bayer.com

Product campaign

• [product or campaign].[tld]

Also, campaign sites can be registered as subdomains of the relevant Bayer domain in the form of [subdomain].bayer.[tld].

Sometimes intranet websites must be hosted externally, or even accessible for external users. These websites require special domain names.

Internal Websites, Externally Hosted

Some Bayer websites must be hosted on Bayer’s private cloud, even though they are for internal use only. Domains for these websites are always of the form [name].int.bayer.com.
 

Examples
awards.int.bayer.com
youniverse.int.bayer.com

Intranet Websites, Externally Accessible

Occasionally, an intranet website needs to be available to external users. Such cases are referred to as “joint domains” because they have the same name for internet and intranet users. In practice, these might be physically separate servers. All such sites must be registered as subdomains of bayer.biz.
 

Examples
mycloud.bayer.biz
mytransfer-lev.bayer.biz

Applications that are designed to run in the browser should have a descriptive name. The actual domain name depends upon the hosting environment; please refer to the appropriate category above.

It is occasionally necessary to use domains for technical purposes such as mail servers, test servers, database services, logging, etc. As these names are never to be used in a browser, non-descriptive names should be used.
 

Examples
nvppa10.bayer.ch
p-xyz.bayer.com

When working on a new project or product, it is sometimes advisable to register related or similar domains beyond the one(s) following the basic rules listed above. This is known as “defensive registration” and is intended to prevent third parties from registering such domains themselves for disruptive or abusive purposes.

However, if you decide that some defensive registration is required, you should also follow the principle that “less is more.” Consider carefully the countries and audiences you will be targeting and do not try to register every possible combination. In particular, do not register subdomains of an existing Bayer property, as no third party is able to do this.

Websites can be configured to work with multiple domains with and without “www.” Ideally, one domain “www” should be configured as the canonical domain name: the one to which all aliases redirect to. With this approach, whichever alias domain people use, the browser will always show the canonical domain. This also avoids potential issues with search engines and cookies.

It is not permitted to use frames, meta-redirects or other client-side redirects when configuring multiple domains for a single website.
 

What does [tld] mean?
TLD means top-level domain, e.g., .com or .de

Domains must not be registered for social media channels. Please refer to Social Media Channel Approval & Setup for any social media questions.