.UK Announced

[TinkyWinky]

Just read the other post about the legal action against Graeme and what interested me more than the article mentioned in the post http://www.thirdsector.co.uk/news/1168103/nominet-will-sue-member-alleged-libel-chief-executive-lesley-cowley/ is the comment at the bottom.

Is Lesley Cowley being investigated by SFO. Can anyone confirm this?

If so, then as commented Nominets M&A's require her to resign or the Director's to remove her from the position.

As this has not happened, this calls in to doubt the legitamacy of the whole board - hence the members should be able to demand the removal of all key Director positions? Simple due diligence on behalf of the shareholders/stakeholders or am I missing something?

 

[Nigel]

Latest reply from Eleanor Bradley. As you can see a lot of my questions are not being answered. However she does confirm 'However, DCMS officials and the Minister have been kept informed throughout the consultation process, including the steps we had taken to involve stakeholders.'. So why wasn't Parliament told that existing registrants including all the 'small businesses with .co.uk addresses' were not emailed about the direct.uk consultation? I'll be writing to Mr Vaizey again.

"Dear Nigel,

Thank you for your recent email.

With regards to the question raised in parliament, Minister Ed Vaizey MP made it clear that Nominet’s operations are not regulated by Government. However, DCMS officials and the Minister have been kept informed throughout the consultation process, including the steps we had taken to involve stakeholders.

I can confirm that we did not feel able to contact registrants regarding the direct consultation, and that we did receive legal advice on this.

Regarding the legal advice, we are under no obligation to disclose either the nature or the details of legal advice received by the company, and have no intention of doing so.

I appreciate that you would want more detail than we can supply, but hope you find the points of clarification above helpful.


Kind regards

Eleanor"

 

[Edwin]

Just read the other post about the legal action against Graeme and what interested me more than the article mentioned in the post http://www.thirdsector.co.uk/news/1168103/nominet-will-sue-member-alleged-libel-chief-executive-lesley-cowley/ is the comment at the bottom.

Is Lesley Cowley being investigated by SFO. Can anyone confirm this?

If so, then as commented Nominets M&A's require her to resign or the Director's to remove her from the position.

As this has not happened, this calls in to doubt the legitamacy of the whole board - hence the members should be able to demand the removal of all key Director positions? Simple due diligence on behalf of the shareholders/stakeholders or am I missing something?

I would imagine that IF she is being investigated, she would only have to resign IF she were subsequently found guilty. "Innocent until proven guilty" applies here as in any other situation. Note: I'm choosing my words carefully.

 

[Stephen]

europa.eu

I don't think nominet would be too happy if someone else registered the domain nominet.uk . Obviously they would never let this happen, but they are obviously more than happy to let it happen to potentially hundreds of thousands of small businesses. Nominet should be making sure this doesnt happen and thinking about how they can protect small businesses, who have already invested in .co.uk domains for their businesses.

http://tmview.europa.eu/tmview/basicSearch.html

Enter search term "Nominet" and you find others apart from our Nominet (UK)have a European trademark on that word it seems to me?

Maybe/almost certainly SOCIETE GENERALE will not want to enter a bidding war for nominet.uk
but it shows how ill thought out the Nominet plan is for .uk involving Trademark holders the way they have.

 

[websaway]

Is Nominets attempt to introduce .uk as a business extension, cybersquatting.

In effect, if it was introduced, on day one Nominet would technically own 10,000,000 .uk domains, aproximately 9,000,000 of them with a co.uk equivalent and would be able to hold 9,000,000 co uk owners to ransom for financial gain, or threaten to sell their equivalent .uk domains to a competitor.

Does this amount to cybersquatting ?

 

[Nigel]

Is Nominets attempt to introduce .uk as a business extension, cybersquatting.

In effect, if it was introduced, on day one Nominet would technically own 10,000,000 .uk domains, aproximately 9,000,000 of them with a co.uk equivalent and would be able to hold 9,000,000 co uk owners to ransom for financial gain, or threaten to sell their equivalent .uk domains to a competitor.

Does this amount to cybersquatting ?

Nominet used to think that registering similar domains, with a view to profiting from existing domains, amounted to cybersquatting. There will be thousands of successful .uk registrants that will seek to profit from the .co.uk registrants in terms of traffic and resale. Yet Nominet are totally silent on that risk. The Government Minister Ed Vaizey was also silent when asked a question on behalf of 'small businesses with .co.uk addresses' question in Parliament on 8th January 2013. But here is a statement from Nominet's Phil Kingsland. One he made BEFORE direct.uk was launched:

"Once a company has successfully registered the right domain name for its business it is important to protect it from falling into the wrong hands such as cybersquatters — ignoring their existence can be an expensive risk.

What is cybersquatting?

Cybersquatting is where someone chooses to register, sell or use a domain name with the sole purpose of profiting from another brand’s trademark. For instance, if Nominet has built up a brand around nominet.org.uk, someone could register nominet.co.uk and try and sell it to Nominet for a profit."
Here's the full article
http://www.freshbusinessthinking.com...ID=1488&PGID=1

 

[foz]

http://www.freshbusinessthinking.com/business_advice.php?AID=1488#.UQYzAWeDPhA

What an awful explanation. Any lay person would come away from that thinking any mark or "rights" gives a complainant the green right to pursue that line of thought on any domain registrant out there.

 

[Edwin]

http://www.freshbusinessthinking.com/business_advice.php?AID=1488#.UQYzAWeDPhA

What an awful explanation. Any lay person would come away from that thinking any mark or "rights" gives a complainant the green right to pursue that line of thought on any domain registrant out there.

The article is the truth, and nothing but the truth, but not the WHOLE truth. In other words, what Phil said is "correct" because he's used qualifiers like "may" and "could" - it's absolutely true that brand names and trademark infringements may be indications of cybersquatting.

That's especially the case when, as he puts it: "Where the name only has value because of the reputation built up in the unregistered name by the claimant, that money is made on the back of goodwill, which the original trader put effort into creating." which is the same point I've made on many appraisal threads containing "obvious TM" names.

However, the article could definitely be improved (the WHOLE truth) by adding a paragraph or two explaining the concept of generic/descriptive domains and the fact that trademarks on words that are themselves generic give much weaker rights than trademarks (or even unregistered rights) on made-up words and expressions.

All that said, I didn't see anything factually incorrect about what he wrote. The Nominet example is spot on: "nominet" is a made-up word, and thanks to the Nominet we know and love/loathe, it's quite a "famous" brand too. So somebody registering Nominet.co.uk WOULD be cybersquatting.

 

[foz]

A DRS has two prongs to succeed, rights by the complaint and abuse (bad faith) by the registrant. I am sick and tired of people going on about rights only as the determining factor of cyber squatting.

 

[Edwin]

A DRS has two prongs to succeed, rights by the complaint and abuse (bad faith) by the registrant. I am sick and tired of people going on about rights only as the determining factor of cyber squatting.

That's too simplistic. If you register "madeupfamousbrandname.co.uk" you have no rights in it no matter how you use it. The act of registration itself is often sufficient to demonstrate bad faith in such situations when it comes to what trademark law refers to as "arbitrary marks" which are the strongest form of trademark.

This article is an interesting read http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/udrp/analysis.html (yes, it applies to the UDRP, but the points it makes have a lot of validity for the DRS too)

 

[foz]

That's too simplistic. If you register "madeupfamousbrandname.co.uk" you have no rights in it no matter how you use it. The act of registration itself is often sufficient to demonstrate bad faith in such situations when it comes to what trademark law refers to as "arbitrary marks" which are the strongest form of trademark.

You are being simplistic like Phil. e.g. orange_co_uk, apple_co_uk & virgin_co_uk are examples that defeat your argument.

 

[Edwin]

You are being simplistic like Phil. e.g. orange_co_uk, apple_co_uk & virgin_co_uk are examples that defeat your argument.

None of those are made up. They're repurposed words. They are weaker under trademark law because it would be possible to mount a defense based on the USE being made of them (sell oranges on orange.co.uk, apples on apple.co.uk and, um, well...)

What I mean (and what Phil was referring to in his article):
- Microsoft
- Nominet
- Xerox
- Hyundai
- Logitech
etc.

All the above were invented by the companies in question, and had ZERO (not "near zero" but actually ZERO) value until those companies started using them - i.e. any/all value in them was created by the effort of those companies.

And that brings us full circle back to my quote from Phil's article: "Where the name only has value because of the reputation built up in the unregistered name by the claimant, that money is made on the back of goodwill, which the original trader put effort into creating."

 

[foz]

What I mean (and what Phil was referring to in his article):
- Microsoft
- Nominet
- Xerox
- Hyundai
- Logitech
etc.

All those examples have legal departments which know the score. Phil's article is aimed at SME and mid range companies that will be misinformed by his lack of expansive narrative on the subject.

 

[websaway]

But is .UK in itself a cybersquat, if it's issued as a business namespace.

The rights given to prospective registrants doesn't negate the fact that they are being held to ransom, and the sale, no matter how it's priced, is for financial gain.

 

[foz]

But is .UK in itself a cybersquat, if it's issued as a business namespace.

I don't believe so.

 

[Edwin]

All those examples have legal departments which know the score. Phil's article is aimed at SME and mid range companies that will be misinformed by his lack of expansive narrative on the subject.

Which is exactly what I said too: it's lacking a paragraph or two about descriptive/generic domains.

But what's there is correct. It's just not the whole story.

 

[anthony]

...

- Nominet...

All the above were invented...

Not so, 'Nominet' is Latin, meaning names or to name, it is perfectly legitimate to see it crop up in a lot of European languages!

 

[Edwin]

But is .UK in itself a cybersquat, if it's issued as a business namespace.

The rights given to prospective registrants doesn't negate the fact that they are being held to ransom, and the sale, no matter how it's priced, is for financial gain.

Half of that is true, half of that is false.

.uk itself is not a "cybersquat". However, it may encourage cyberquatting because suddenly madeupbrand.uk is available for all equivalent domains to the existing registered .co.uk domains.

You're correct that existing registrants are effectively (not literally) being held to ransom, because they HAVE to buy the equivalent .uk or suffer a real business risk. That doesn't mean .uk itself is cybersquatting.

You're also correct that .uk is driven by the prospect of extreme financial gain. That doesn't mean .uk itself is cybersquatting.

There are so many real, 100% valid accusations that can be levelled at the direct.uk proposal that I believe it's a waste of energy (tilting at windmills) to try and pin a cybersquatting angle on the proposal, since it clearly isn't that.

 

[websaway]

Half of that is true, half of that is false.

.uk itself is not a "cybersquat". However, it may encourage cyberquatting because suddenly madeupbrand.uk is available for all equivalent domains to the existing registered .co.uk domains.

You're correct that existing registrants are effectively (not literally) being held to ransom, because they HAVE to buy the equivalent .uk or suffer a real business risk. That doesn't mean .uk itself is cybersquatting.

You're also correct that .uk is driven by the prospect of extreme financial gain. That doesn't mean .uk itself is cybersquatting.

There are so many real, 100% valid accusations that can be levelled at the direct.uk proposal that I believe it's a waste of energy (tilting at windmills) to try and pin a cybersquatting angle on the proposal, since it clearly isn't that.

But it will need a cast iron legal angle to assure success.
One that can't be sidestepped

 

[foz]

Not so, 'Nominet' is Latin, meaning names or to name, it is perfectly legitimate to see it crop up in a lot of European languages!

Love it