Battle over itunes.co.uk

The fight for the itunes.co.uk domain is finally over as Ben Cohen--a former dot-com millionaire--and his company, CyberBritain Group, has officially to get the domain it once owned back from Apple. Nominet--a .uk registry--awarded the domain name to Apple in March of this year because it was an "abusive registration," according to a report from ZDNet UK. Cohen responded to the ruling by demanding that the expert presiding over the dispute resolution procedure should not be an "Apple Mac" user "because in the view of the Respondent there is a 'cult' associated with the products of the Complainant, which attracts fanatical users".

Cohen reportedly lost a bid for a judicial review in August because the company failed to use the appeal process that forms part of the resolution procedure procured by Nominet. "We always said you can't go running off to court before exhausting the process you are complaining about. And a judicial review is wrong for this anyway; that is for complaining about government decisions, and we're not a government body," said Edward Phillips, a Nominet company solicitor.

Phillips also noted inconsistencies in Cohen's case. "Our dispute resolution procedure is designed to be very easy to use, approachable and fair. There is even an element of appeal, but he didn't use it. He said that our procedure was too expensive, but then he went off to the High Court, which is not the cheapest place in the world. He never paid a penny for the dispute procedure here."

Cohen reportedly told Silicon.com in December of 2004 that he had innocently registered iTunes.co.uk as part of a batch of domain names relating to music back in 2000 without any knowledge of Apple's intentions to use it as a trademark, according to the report. Apple cited the fact that it had registered the iTunes trademark, coupled with CyberBritain's offer to sell the domain for $50,000 two days after Apple offered $5,000 for it, and CyberBritain's redirection of the domain name to Napster, a rival music service.

by MacNN Staff