If you discover that someone else has registered a UK domain name which is similar to your business’s own name or trading style, you can make a complaint to Nominet UK through its Dispute Resolution Service (DRS). Recently, an architectural company succeeded in having a domain name that was nearly identical to its own transferred to it.

A man had registered the domain name and was using it for a website on which he made a number of allegations about the company, its sole director and shareholder and the director’s wife. The company made a DRS complaint, asserting that it had rights in the domain name because it had been using its own domain name, which was almost identical, since 2010. It claimed that the man’s use of the domain name had disrupted its business.

The man denied that his registration of the domain name was an abusive registration. He claimed that the website contained factual information and legitimate criticism, which fell squarely within the protection for fair criticism under Nominet’s DRS policy.

To succeed under the DRS policy, the company had to prove on the balance of probabilities that it had rights in respect of a name or mark identical or similar to the domain name. The company having used its trading name and an almost identical domain name since 2010, the expert was satisfied that it had done so.

The company also needed to show that the domain name was an abusive registration in the hands of the man. It argued that the man’s use of the domain name for a website attacking it was self-evidently disruptive, and the expert noted that the man did not contest this: his case was that the website constituted fair use. The expert observed that while fair use could include websites criticising a person or business, the domain name appeared to have been chosen specifically to confuse internet users, rather than being a modification of the company’s name which made it clear that the website was a protest site. The website contained serious allegations of dishonesty and lack of integrity, and the man had been given an opportunity to justify the allegations but had not done so. The expert concluded that the company had succeeded in demonstrating abusive registration.

Both of the requirements of the DRS policy having been met, the expert directed that the domain name be transferred to the company.