By Jo Best, 29 March 2005 12:30
NEWS The ex dot-com millionaire that lost the rights to the iTunes.co.uk domain name has announced he plans to take his legal battle to the High Court.
Last week, domain name registry service Nominet ruled that Benjamin Cohen must hand the iTunes.co.uk name to Apple. Although Cohen registered the name in November 2000, three years before Apple initially launched its online music shop of the same name, Nominet's dispute resolution procedure found in favour of the Cupertino-based company.
Cohen said he has been deterred from appealing directly to Nominet due to the cost - a £3,000 fee in addition to legal expenses - and feels the domain name registrar is biased in favour of large US corporations over small UK companies.
Apple offered to buy the domain name for $5,000 late last year but Cohen responded he would only be willing to sell for £50,000. Following several weeks of informal mediation which failed to resolve the dispute, a Nominet expert was appointed to rule on ownership of the domain name.
Cohen asked at the time that the expert not be a Mac user because "there is a 'cult' associated with the products of [Apple], which attract fanatical users", Nominet's ruling said.
Cohen, now CEO of CyberBritain, said he intends to refer the decision for Judicial Review in the High Court. Apple, which Cohen said branded him a cybersquatter, declined to comment.
Currently, the iTunes.co.uk domain name redirects visitors to another of Cohen's ventures, a shopping site called Quickquid.com.
Previously, the site was used as a music search engine and to redirect page visitors to skipmusic.com and later cyberbritain.com. Following iTunes launch in the UK, the site received over 4,000 hits a day.
Late last year, Cohen tried to sell the domain name to Apple's online music rival Napster. Although Napster declined the offer, for a brief period in November, iTunes.co.uk redirected its visitors to Napster.co.uk.
Nominet-appointed expert Claire Milne ruled the registration took "unfair advantage" of Apple's trademarks and decided "on the balance of probabilities, I find the domain name... is an abusive registration on the grounds of its use in a manner taking advantage of, and being unfairly detrimental to [Apple]".
Comments
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1. Damon Hastings
Interesting how the Mac news sites (e.g. http://www.spymac.com/news/index.php?contentid=2162) somehow forget to mention the fact that Cohen registered the site 3 years before Apple came out with iTunes. And how they drop the quotes from "cybersquatter". Ah, zealots. Gotta love 'em.
2. Adrian Chrome
But this was clearly an abusive registration. This guy registered iTunes.co.uk after APple anounced the software product of the same name. The name is distinctive and his intentions were clearly dishonorable. His "Cyberbritain" site is a sordid affialte marketing affair. His an Internet Chancer!
Far more interesting is the fact that GAME Retail PLC is trying to wrest the domain game.co.uk away from a small company who registered it in 1995. Particulalry since that domain is a generic, which by Nominet's own rules cannot constitute an abusive registration, and GAME has traded variously as "Future Zone" and "Electronics Boutique" since then.
Nominet are very probably incapable of managing a TLD, but on this occassion, they got it right.
3. Jez Fairclough
I think that Nominet was wrong. If the guy registered the name before the product was launched he did so for a reason of having an idea. Taking that away from someone is no different than theft in my book.
I agree he should take it further and i for one hope he wins.
4. Loree Parker
Apropos of nothing, not sure you'll ever read this (and with perhaps undue obfuscation of personal details)... Would you happen to be the same Damon Hastings of the inaugural class of our high school?