Bayern Connect GmbH to Seek .BAYERN Web Address

Prominent Bavarian Organizations Support Plan to Provide Home for Bavaria on
the Internet

MUNICH, Sept. 10 /PRNewswire/ -- Bavarian citizens, associations and
organizations will soon be able to express and underline their Bavarian
identity by registering their Internet address under .BAYERN, the new web
address for Bavaria. Thousands of new names will be available to Bavarians in
addition to the existing .de or .com domain names.

"Bavarians are proud of the their homeland and heritage, and our position as
the Internet leaders in Germany. Bavaria deserves to take its rightful place
on the Internet with .BAYERN, an Internet address for Bavarians," said Bayern
Connect CEO Caspar von Veltheim. "The new address will give Bavaria visibility
and prestige, and will encourage innovation and new business opportunities."

Bayern Connect GmbH, with support of prominent Bavarian organizations, will
apply to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) to
run .BAYERN ("punkt Bayern"). ICANN will begin accepting applications for new
top-level domains in the beginning of 2010. Examples of the new names include
www.hotels.bayern , www.allianz.bayern, www.schmidt.bayern.

Bayern Connect wants to represent Bavarian interests on the Internet. In
pursuit of that effort, Bayern Connect has already presented its project to
the Bavarian State Government and aims for close cooperation with the
government. Bayern Connect has already won the support of prominent Bavarian
organizations. In addition, Prince Leopold of Bavaria, an enduring advocate
for the preservation of Bavarian traditions, is serving as Senior Advisor and
supporter of the effort. He says: "With .BAYERN, Bayern Connect will give
Bavaria a home on the virtual Internet."

.BAYERN is already in compliance with the strict technical requirements needed
to win approval from ICANN. "We need a strong and stable technical
infrastructure to take our place among existing top-level domains," said von
Veltheim. "We are therefore using the Espresso platform, which powers over a
dozen country-code top-level domains, is used by ICANN worldwide to
demonstrate security best practices, and can deliver domain names for
Bavarians at a fraction of the cost of other solutions."

Bayern Connect is developing a strong policy and legal framework to protect
trademark holders. Intellectual property attorney Dr. Andreas Schulz states,
"Trademark owners are entitled to a fair and transparent system by which the
domain names are allocated. I will help Bayern Connect develop policies that
will assure this."

As a Bavarian business, Bayern Connect will donate a substantial portion of
the annual registration revenues to Bavarian charities and cultural
organizations. "Bavarians will make .BAYERN succeed, and therefore we will
give back to Bavaria," said von Veltheim.

Bayern Connect GmbH is based in Munich, and the group's innovative plan has
attracted significant funding from within Germany and from the United States.
For more information, see http://www.bayernconnect.com.

www.bayernconnect.de

SOURCE Bayern Connect GmbH

Maximiliana von Cramm, Bayern Connect GmbH, +49 89 360 351 04,
info@bayernconnect.de