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Domain Disputes

By Jason King

Buying a .org.uk domain name is inexpensive, from £20 per year, but once you’ve put a website address on your letterhead and email addresses on your business cards, losing or changing it can be costly. Unfortunately, the ownership of domains can sometimes be disputed, requiring negotiation, arbitration and associated costs.

Every charity, however small, needs a domain name. As explained in the Knowledgebase article What’s in a Domain Name?, a domain represents your organisation’s identity online, giving you an official, unique address for your website and email.

Disputes about domains can easily arise. The case study Who Owns Your Website, describes how two trustees resigned, taking control of the charity’s website with them. In other instances web designers have died unexpectedly or fallen out with a charity, which then had to prove ownership of their domain. Other charities have been targeted by unscrupulous cyber-squatters who have deliberately purchased similar domain names and then tried to sell them at an inflated price to the charity. The good new is that in many cases disputes are avoidable and there are actions you can take to resolve them.

What to consider when buying a domain

Domains are allocated on a first-come, first-served basis by domain registrars. Domains ending in .uk are registered by Nominet, a nonprofit organisation. Website hosting companies and ISPs can act as agents to register your domain name for you.

As soon as you know which domain you want, purchase it before someone else does. However, think twice about buying a .com, .org or other domain that isn't a .uk domain, because disputes involving them can be more difficult to resolve.

If a company offers free website hosting, don't take them up on the offer unless you can also have your own domain name. Once you own your own domain, if you change your website hosting company, your website and email address can travel with you.

Free domain names are sometimes offered with website hosting, but read the terms and conditions: the domain may only be free for the first two years, after which you must pay a renewal fee; there may be a fee to transfer the domain elsewhere; or you might not actually own the domain name if it’s registered in the website company's name.

If you commission a web designer to build your site don’t give them responsibility for purchasing the domain. By all means ask them to suggest companies and packages, but buy the domain yourself.

When you purchase a domain name you will be asked to register it. You should do so in the name of your organisation and it’s a good idea to have several different staff or trustees listed as contacts.

Cyber-squatting

The National Deaf Children’s Society, which owned ndcs.org.uk, had a dispute with a Harold A. Meyer who purchased ndcs.org to run a website called Nude Dames, Chat, Sex. Meyer had also registered a .org domain similar to the British Heart Foundation. He demanded £20,000 from BHF to relinquish his rights to bhf.org and £12,500 from NDCS, so both charities took legal action. The BHF lost their case but NDCS won because their acronym is better-known to the public.

To lessen the potential for cyber-squatting, a charity could register all domain names similar to the one it actually uses for its website: most commonly these would include .org, org.uk, .com, .co.uk and .net. For each domain there could be variations of spelling and punctuation (using hyphens and underscores). Also, a charity might buy domains for both their full name and their acronym. For smaller organisations this can be too expensive and time-consuming and they might purchase only a single domain.

When buying a domain, try not to infringe any well-known organisations’ trademarks. For instance, in 2001 a charity bought healthyyellowpages.org.uk but was instructed by yell.com’s lawyers to stop using that domain because it infringed the Yellow Pages trademark.

Domain renewal

In 2002 the Poetry Society's website at www.poetrysoc.com disappeared, replaced by adverts for Viagra and other products. As well as losing the website, their email was being sent to a server in Hong Kong. Due to an administrative lapse the Society had failed to renew its domain name registration, allowing a company in Hong Kong to legally purchase it. Fortunately their lawyer resolved the problem within ten days, with the Society paying a small fee to recover the domain, but only after it had to reprint its leaflets with a new web address. Unscrupulous cyber-squatters can buy and resell lapsed domains using automated software and getting your domain name back can be time-consuming and expensive.

Domains usually have to be renewed every two years and the company you purchased from should send you reminders by email near to the date. If you change your email address let them know, because if you miss the reminders your website and email will stop working and you could lose your domain. It's not unknown for registration agents, especially small companies, to forget to remind you to renew your domain name so you should take responsibility for making sure it's done.

Fortunately, if your domain lapses it shouldn’t go on sale immediately: it should be put on hold, giving you a grace period - one or two months - within which to renew.

Many domain registrars let you "back-order" a domain name, usually by paying an annual fee. The registrar checks the domain daily and as soon as it's listed as available it will automatically be registered to the user who back-ordered it. This can be a useful fail-safe.

Make an entry in your diary to remind yourself to renew the domain. Keep copies of correspondence with web hosting companies and domain registrars and keep a paper copy of all usernames and passwords filed in your office.

Your options for resolving a domain dispute

If you’ve lost your domain name or if someone else owns a domain you believe you have the rights to, you have various options.

Firstly, contact the owner, tell them you’re a charity and you may be able to successfully negotiate with them; but they have the right to decline your offer and you may have to agree a settlement fee. If they are unreasonable you might have to offer them a lot of money to buy the domain.

If the issue is that you don't want people to confuse your website with theirs, you could ask them to put a link to your site and a disclaimer stating that their site is unconnected with yours. You might consider doing the same.

If they are misusing the domain you could hire a lawyer and get an injunction against them - if you have the resources to do this. If the site is being used for illegal or immoral purposes, you could contact their ISP and ask them to suspend the site (although they cannot transfer the domain to you).

A cheap (possibly free) option is to try arbitration through Nominet’s Dispute Resolution Service.

You could register a new domain for your organisation. You'd then have to change your stationery and tell the world about your new website and email addresses.

How to find out who owns a domain

To find out who currently owns a particular domain, use the free WHOIS database at http://www.whois.net. The information includes the registrant's details, registration date and current status, registrant's agent, and the name servers associated with the domain name. Registrants of domain names are obliged to provide Nominet with accurate details; they can opt out from having their address published but Nominet can still provide it to people with a legitimate interest.

Nominet’s Dispute Resolution Service

Nominet is the not-for-profit company that manages the database of all .uk domain names. Nominet provides the Dispute Resolution Service (DRS) to quickly and cheaply deal with disputes about the registration of .uk domain names, with Nominet acting as a neutral third party.

To make a complaint, use the form on www.nominet.org.uk and send a signed copy with all the evidence to them. Nominet send this to the domain’s registrant, who is asked to respond; this response is sent back to the complainant who can comment on any new points made. This stage is free of cost.

If the case is still not settled, it moves to mediation: Nominet speaks to both parties by phone and discusses, in confidence, how the case could be resolved. There is no fee for mediation, although sometimes a settlement includes money. Mediation usually takes two weeks.

In some cases the complainant can pay to have an approved expert appointed, chosen from a list of mainly lawyers and IT professionals. The fee, £750 + VAT, goes to the expert not Nominet. The expert gives a written decision based on the documentation but does not speak to either party or find out what happened during the confidential mediation. If the expert decides that the complainant has proved their case, they can order that the domain is transferred to them. If not, they will order that no action is taken. The expert can even order the domain name to be suspended or deleted, but this is unusual.

The expert’s decision (and the appeal decision, if there is one) are published on Nominet’s web site.

Disputes involving a non-UK domain name

Nominet's Dispute Resolution Service can only help you to resolve .uk domain disputes. If you have a .com, .net or .org domain, visit the website of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) at www.icann.org instead.