A British businessman has lost the rights to a domain name he had bought, after being found guilty of “abusive registration”. Andy Hugh, lost the rights to the ‘paramount.co.uk’ website after trying to sell it to the Hollywood studio of the same name for £120,000.
Mr Hugh argued that the word ‘paramount’ is a generic term to which Paramount Pictures, who brought the action, could not expect any special rights. The judge hearing the case however found that Mr Hugh and the company brokering the domain name sale had “implicitly threatened” the movie studio, demanding a sum “considerably in excess of any reasonable out-of-pocket costs”. The judge then ordered that Mr Hugh be stripped of the rights to the disputed domain name without compensation.
Mr Hugh’s experiences show the problems of a limited domain name supply – an issue that many experts hope will be resolved by the new Top Level Domains (TLDs) which are due to go live later this year. In the meantime, cases like that of the ‘paramount.co.uk’ website address will continue.
Much of this case hinged on the demand for £120,000 to the rights of the domain name. Had Mr Hugh been operating a business named Paramount, the judge’s decision may have been more difficult. However simply owning the rights and demanding a huge sum of money to buy them, Mr Hugh was found to be ‘cybersquatting’ – hoping to profit from the sale of a property he had no extended rights to own.
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