Domain Names
Q: What do Wayne Rooney, Starbucks and Ryanair all have in common?
A: They have all successfully recovered their domain names from people who were making ‘dubious’ use of them under the UK’s world-leading ‘.co.uk’ domain name dispute resolution service.
The .co.uk registrar, ‘Nominet’, is celebrating the tenth anniversary of the dispute resolution service which has heard over 10,250 cases over its short life.
If you have cyber squatters on a domain name that you think should rightfully be yours you may, however, be in for a shock when you try to ‘recover’ it. “It is true that this is a service for the trademark owners, but they have to prove their case,” says Nominet’s senior legal counsel, Nick Wenban-Smith. Mastercard learned this to its cost when it tried unsuccessfully to ‘recover’ www.maestro.co.uk in 2006. The domain name was registered to a domain name dealer who had also registered domain names such as bigbrothertv.co.uk and beverlyhillscop.co.uk.
To win a case over a .co.uk domain name through Nominet’s service you need to:
(1) Prove that you have legally enforceable rights in the domain name (for example, a registered trademark)
(2) Ascertain that the existing website on that domain is an abusive registration.
Compared to the old process of recovering a domain name through the courts Nominet’s service is a relatively cheap and quick procedure. However, rather than go through the whole process take practical steps to avoid the necessity in the first place.
- Make sure that your .co.uk domain names are properly renewed with your registrar.
- Purchase on-line real-estate relating to your tradename/brands that you may want to exploit in the future or preserve for the present, for example, for us: www.chadwicklawrence.co.uk; www.chad-law.co.uk; www.chadlaw.co.uk etc.
- Consider registering your brand(s) so that you can get over the first hurdle of the above test without problems about evidencing your rights.
