James Delahunty
6 Dec 2004 17:23
Apple has begun threatening the owner of the itunes.co.uk domain, accusing him of being a cybersquatter. They have taken him to UK registry Nominet looking for ownership of the domain name. The owner is Benjamin Cohen, who just happens to have a father who is a solicitor. Cohen registered the itunes.co.uk domain name on 7th November 2000, whereas Apple were only had the trademark for "iTunes" published in the Trade Marks Journal on 6 December 2000. It was granted a limited trademark that did not cover music products on 23 March 2001, and eventually went live with its iTunes offering in June 2004. Cohen says he had no idea Apple were planning to launch an iTunes service.
So now four years after Cohen registered the itunes.co.uk domain, Apple have decided to try taking the domain name. Two days after Cohen registered the domain he made use of it by forwarding it to a music search engine service at his CyberBritain site. Since November this year, numerous letters have been sent to CyberBritain from Apple, including an offer of a small sum of money for the domain. Now Apple has taken the issue to Nominet, where it will be put through the organization’s domain resolution process. Cohen admits however that if his father was not a solicitor and hadn't explained to him about the laws surrounding this issue, he would have given into pressure from Apple by now. He is confident however, that CyberBritain will win this battle.
Source:
The Register