Nominet and DRS reach agreement

UK domain registry Nominet has reached a last-minute agreement with domain name reseller Domain Registrar Services (DRS).

Last week Nominet took DRS, Scott Denny (a DRS director) and an allied company, UK-names, to court for passing off and trademark infringement. But a deal was struck on Friday morning before the case went before the judge.

At the time of going to press, the agreement had not been lodged with the legal authorities.

vnunet.com contacted DRS but Scott Denny was unavailable for comment, and Nominet said that it would issue a statement at a later date.

The domain registry had originally asked the court for an interim injunction to force DRS to hand over or destroy any items, products or materials regarding the trademark infringement.

It also demanded the names and addresses of the companies to which DRS offered its services, and that it gets back costs incurred in the case.

Nominet also wanted guarantees that would stop DRS, UK-names (which operates the uk-names.biz website and has no links to similarly named companies) and Scott Denny infringing its trademark and passing off in the future.

The decision to take legal action against DRS followed complaints from companies about DRS' selling practices.

Companies complained that DRS, a member of Nominet, had told them that it was acting under advice from the registry to warn about "mystery shoppers" trying to register domain names similar to theirs.