Nominet nobbles domain name resellers

High Court

Nominet has successfully closed down two domain name resellers, and barred the companies' directors from running such services in the future, following a High Court action.

But the .uk national domain name registry has warned that companies that registered through Domain Registrar Services (DRS) or sister company UK Names could face problems in renewing their name. Any name not renewed can be bought by other companies.

Although DRS and UK Names ceased trading earlier this year, and passed on their customer lists to an unnamed ISP so that the names could continue to be hosted, many of the address details were incorrect.

The legal moves began in the autumn of last year after vnunet.com received a number of complaints.

The companies, which claimed to be acting on Nominet's behalf, were making unsolicited approaches to potential and existing .uk domain name holders to obtain payment for domain name registration services.

The misrepresentation of their relationship with Nominet led to an interim High Court injunction last November.

This week Nominet won a High Court order stating that neither company can pass itself off as Nominet.

DRS and UK Names also had to contribute £40,000 to Nominet's costs in pursuing the case, and agree to give Nominet a list of all those approached by either company.

In addition both companies and their respective directors, Scott Denny and Matthew Hayes, have agreed that they will never again "engage directly or indirectly in any business associated with domain name registration and/or maintenance, whether under the .uk top level domain or otherwise".

Lesley Cowley, managing director of Nominet UK, said: "We are delighted with this result, as people will no longer be confused by cold calls supposedly from Nominet."

Nominet is now advising any company that registered through either DRS or UK Names to run a Whois search, find the ISP hosting their domain name and get the details changed if they are wrong.

A Whois search of .uk registrations can be done through the Nominet home page.