high court
high court

Nominet and DRS reach agreement

Out-of-court settlement struck at the 11th hour

Written by Dinah Greek

UK domain registry Nominet has reached a last-minute agreement with domain name reseller Domain Registrar Services (DRS).

Last week Nominet took DRS, Scott Denny (a DRS director) and an allied company, UK-names, to court for passing off and trademark infringement. But a deal was struck on Friday morning before the case went before the judge.

At the time of going to press, the agreement had not been lodged with the legal authorities.

vnunet.com contacted DRS but Scott Denny was unavailable for comment, and Nominet said that it would issue a statement at a later date.

The domain registry had originally asked the court for an interim injunction to force DRS to hand over or destroy any items, products or materials regarding the trademark infringement.

It also demanded the names and addresses of the companies to which DRS offered its services, and that it gets back costs incurred in the case.

Nominet also wanted guarantees that would stop DRS, UK-names (which operates the uk-names.biz website and has no links to similarly named companies) and Scott Denny infringing its trademark and passing off in the future.

The decision to take legal action against DRS followed complaints from companies about DRS' selling practices.

Companies complained that DRS, a member of Nominet, had told them that it was acting under advice from the registry to warn about "mystery shoppers" trying to register domain names similar to theirs.

Tags:

Further reading

OFT warns on domain name sales

Firms told to beware pressure tactics, while sellers threatened with the law   More...

Nominet nobbles domain name resellers

Dodgy dealers closed down, but there could still be problems ahead   More...

Domain name resellers shut up shop

Criticised domain name sellers shut their doors   More...

Dodgy domain name selling continues

Aggressive 'mystery shopper' sales tactics still an issue   More...

Related articles

Facebook subpoenaed over child grooming

Company accused of ignoring complaints about sexual predators   More...

IBM sues Shentech over fake laptop batteries

Online allegations could point to wider problem   More...

Network Solutions named in class action suit

Domain name registrar accused of 'front running'   More...

Vodafone blocks German T-Mobile iPhone plans

Operator questions sales practices   More...

Do you agree?

Advertisement

Job of the week

Search thousands of IT jobs :

Search thousands of IT jobs:

Advanced search

Hiring now on ComputingCareers:

Related IT jobs

Search thousands of IT jobs :

Search thousands of IT jobs:

Advanced search

Advertisement

Watch

23 Jul 2008

2.99 MBSmall time security, official 'spying' requests and a spammer jail break More...

22 Jul 2008

3.22 MBSat-nav crashes, open source security and female gamers More...

21 Jul 2008

3.12 MBGlobal internet reach, online spending and the space race More...

Poll

EUROPEAN E-COMMERCE

EUROPEAN E-COMMERCE

Are you happy making an online purchase from another European country?

Previous poll results

Newsletter signup

Sign up for our range of FREE newsletters:

Existing User

Newsletter user login:

Enter email address to edit your newsletter preferences

Spotlight

Security

Major DNS flaw revealed

Experts sound alarms over early disclosure   More...

Nintendo DS

Dodgy Chinese Nintendo chargers recalled

Experience could shock some users   More...

Advertisement

Houses of Parliament

Official 'spying' requests top 500,000

Information includes web records and itemised phone bills   More...

Hacking

Small firms naïve about security

SMBs remain prone to attack, says study   More...

Advertisement