We’ve done it again!! Another successful good Friday for the fundraising team at Dawson Hart solicitors as another Charity Easter Egg Hunt goes out with a bang. The Uckfield Community were out on mass last Friday to join in the festivities, and...
If you discover that someone else has registered a UK domain name which is similar to your business's own name or trading style, you can make a complaint to Nominet UK through its Dispute Resolution Service (DRS). Recently, an architectural company succeeded in having a domain name that was nearly identical to its own transferred to it.
A man had registered the domain name and was using it for a website on which he made a number of allegations about the company, its sole director and shareholder and the director's wife. The company made a DRS complaint, asserting that it had rights in the domain name because it had traded using its name since 2010. It claimed that the man had no rights or interest in the domain name and that his use of it had disrupted its business.
The man denied that his registration of the domain name was an abusive registration. He claimed that the website contained factual information and legitimate criticism, which fell squarely within the protection for fair criticism under Nominet's DRS policy. He said that the website presented information that was in the public interest, allowing consumers to make informed decisions about the company's services.
To succeed under the DRS policy, the company had to prove on the balance of probabilities that it had rights in respect of a name or mark that was identical or similar to the domain name. The company having used its trading name and an almost identical domain name since 2010, the expert found that it had satisfied that requirement.
The company also needed to show that the domain name was an abusive registration in the hands of the man. It argued that the man's use of the domain name for a website attacking it was self-evidently disruptive, and the expert noted that the man did not deny this: his case was that the website constituted fair use. The expert observed that while fair use could include websites criticising a person or business, the domain name appeared to have been chosen specifically to confuse internet users, rather than being a modification of the company's name which made it clear that the website was a protest site. The website contained serious allegations of dishonesty and lack of integrity, without providing any justification for them. The man had been given an opportunity to justify the allegations but had not done so. The expert concluded that the company had succeeded in demonstrating abusive registration.
Both of the requirements of the DRS policy having been met, the expert determined that the domain name should be transferred to the company.