Your Questions Answered
Q - We own a Community trademark and somebody registered the domain co.uk without our authorization. How can we get it back? Thank you.
Thursday 25.06.2009 @ 03:59 PM
A - Thank you for your question about the domain name someone has registered.
The cheapest and surest option open to you is likely to be to buy the registration off the current owner. There is a dispute resolution service operated by Nominet (the registrar for .co.uk domains) which you can use to try to get the domain name transferred to you. The problem with this is that it costs to use and, to succeed, you will have to show that the current proprietor of the domain name was acting in “bad faith” when he registered the domain. Just registering a domain name with your mark is unlikely to be enough to constitute “bad faith”. If, however, you ask to buy the domain, and the proprietor says that he will sell it to you but only for an unreasonable amount, that may constitute the necessary “bad faith”. You can find out more about Nominet’s dispute resolution service at http://www.nominet.org.uk/disputes/.
We can handle a dispute filed with Nominet. If your attempts to buy the domain name fail, and you would like us to help you use Nominet’s service, please do let me know. Do also let me know if you have any other questions.
Answered by Kate Széll