Estate Agents Win Website Dispute

It is as well to remember that the Internet can be a threat, as well as a boon, to businesses, as is shown by a dispute involving a woman who registered a confusingly titled domain name and then used it to air her criticisms of a firm of estate agents.



The woman was engaged in a ‘lengthy, acrimonious and emotive’ dispute with the firm and had incorporated the whole of its trading title in her domain name. The site directed browsers to another website, the content of which included scathing criticisms of the firm and its principal officers.



The firm argued that the domain name was very similar to its own and that it had been registered ‘specifically to damage its business’ by portraying the firm and one of its clients as ‘rogues’. It applied to Internet domain registrar Nominet to have the domain removed from the woman’s control. However, the woman insisted that she had acquired the domain name ‘legally and fairly’.



She submitted that her use of the domain name to host ‘a not-for-profit campaigning site’ was ‘a fair use for the greater good’. She also pointed out that the firm had not registered its name as a trade mark and argued that, as an amalgamation of common words, it was in any event too ‘generic’ to merit protection.



The Nominet expert appointed to rule upon the dispute noted that it was no part of his role to rule upon the merits of the background dispute. Directing the woman to hand over her domain name to the firm, he concluded, “I take the view that the domain was registered for the purpose of unfairly disrupting the business of the firm and is therefore abusive.”



The expert observed that the woman’s right to protest would not be curtailed as she would still be able to make public her criticisms of the firm through an alternative website that ‘did not impinge’ on the firm’s rights.