James Delahunty
28 Mar 2005 15:13
The owner of the iTunes.co.uk domain, Benjamin Cohen, has applied to the High Court for a judicial review of his dispute with Apple over the address. Cohen registered the address on 7th November 2000, whereas Apple only had the trademark for "iTunes" published in the Trade Marks Journal on 6th December 2000. At the end of 2004, Apple accused Cohen of Cyber Squatting and demanded that he hand over the domain. Cohen said he registered the domain because he couldn't get tunes.co.uk.
Earlier this month, Domain Registrar Nominet ruled that the domain had to be handed over to Apple. Apple initially did offer Cohen $5,000 for the domain, but when Cohen suggested that the domain was worth at least $50,000, Apple did not negotiate further. "That's quite a miserly amount really," said Mr Cohen, "As soon as we said that [we wanted £50,000], that was it, their lawyers broke off communication."
He is determined to fight against the ruling. "We feel that the procedure that Nominet utilise to settle disputes is unfair and biased towards big business at the expense of legitimate small British companies" he said. "It's a matter of principle now. I paid for it [the domain name] and if Apple had contacted me nicely without lawyers we would have sold it to them."
Source:
Guardian