“Ben Cohen, former teenage dot-com millionaire, has given up his fight to regain the itunes.co.uk domain, according to .uk registry Nominet,” Matt Loney reports for ZDNet UK. “Nominet company solicitor Edward Phillips said on Monday that Cohen’s company, CyberBritain Group Ltd, has formally abandoned all further attempts to get the domain it once owned back from Apple.”
“Nominet awarded the itunes.co.uk domain to Apple in March this year. Apple had claimed that ownership of the domain should be transferred because it holds the iTunes trademark. Cohen told ZDNet UK’s sister site, silicon.com, in December 2004 that he had innocently registered iTunes.co.uk as part of a batch of domain names relating to music back in 2000 without any knowledge of Apple’s intentions to use it as a trademark,” Loney reports. “But the adjudicator presiding over the Nominet dispute resolution procedure, telecoms policy consultant Claire Milne, awarded the domain name to Apple because, she said, it was an ‘abusive registration.'”
Loney reports, “Nominet’s dispute resolution policy defines abusive registration as a domain name that takes unfair advantage of a company’s rights. In this case, Apple cited the fact that it had registered the iTunes trademark, together with CyberBritain’s offer to sell the domain for $50,000 (£29,000) just two days after Apple offered $5,000 for it, and CyberBritain’s redirection of the domain name to rival service Napster. Cohen’s response included the demand that the expert presiding over the dispute resolution procedure should not be an Apple Mac user ‘because in the view of the Respondent there is a ‘cult’ associated with the products of the Complainant, which attracts fanatical users.'”
Full article here.
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Why do Apple products attract fanatical users? For those in denial, it goes something like this: It must be a “cult;” it can’t be because Apple products are so much better and their users’ experiences are vastly superior or I’d feel threatened and stupid for having purchased this Dell running Windows XP along with a Dell DJ Ditty. Stupid Mac user cultists, have another sip of the Kool-Aid, you freaks! Okay, back to work: “Sorry for having to put you on hold, sir. So, what you’re gonna need to do is: erase, reformat, and install Windows XP from scratch. Repeat every 4-6 months, since a fresh malware-free Windows computing experience will rapidly degrade over time…”
Related articles:
iTunes UK domain name dispute continues – March 28, 2005
Apple wins iTunes cybersquatter fight; UK domain registrant considers appeal – March 15, 2005
‘Touchy feely’ Apple Computer in dispute over itunes.co.uk website domian name – December 07, 2004