William_H - 6:31 pm on Jan 12, 2004 (gmt 0)

Although the following situation is primarily a legal one, I would be grateful for some lay opinions as to what rights I may have as the registered owner of a domain name.

There are 12 of us, all owning a vacation home on a single estate. This estate was previously run as a vacation rental business by the then owner, who sold up 4 years ago to individual owners. A bunch of us have got together as a group and run a number of the properties as a business in the same style as before. The group is a loose co-operative, no real legal agreement, jointly marketing our properties as a single entity. We just put equal shares of dollars in once a year to cover running costs, which are mainly marketing (media placement, brochure production) and of course, website costs (hosting, search engineers listings etc).

When we started up the group, I bought the website and domain from the then estate owner, which I then registered in my name as the co-operative group was not a real entity from the viewpoint of domain ownership. I recharged the group funds 100% for this expense with their agreement. Since then I have spent a lot of uncompensated time and effort managing the website, and improving it to the benefit of all group members, as I'm the only one of the group with website design skills.

I am now dissatisfied with the way the group is going, as a number of the group do not want to continue to pay for the frequent updates, listings on search engines etc, which are necessary to maintain the effectiveness of the website as a marketing tool. A small number of us want to jump ship, take the website and domain name, and continue to drive this forward strongly as a separate, smaller but more professional business on our own. This will mean our leaving the co-operative, which has no rules on apportionment of assets.

Question is, if I choose to leave the co-operative, is the domain name really mine, or wholly or partially the group's? Do I have to hand over the domain name (and start again) on the basis that the group contributed to the purchase costs? Or, as the domain name owner, can I just refund the sum of money I was recompensed when I bought the website. Or would I have to refund 9/10 of the value of the website as it now stands? If so how would it be valued, and could I do any of this unilaterally? I know that most of this is for my attorney to answer, but any suggestions would be appreciated.

Also is there any distinction between rights to the content (I'm happy to give that up and start again)and the domain name (which I am not).

Any thoughts?