url ownership

Can someone else own the url to another company?

[Giles Etherington]

Someone else owns the url to one of my clients. eg www.companyname.com and www.companyname.co.uk

Are they allowed to do this? Is there anything I can do to get the url for my client?

[IanTurner]

Yes they are allowed to do this.

For the .co.uk you can file a dispute with Nominet if you think that the registration is an abusive registration.

An overview of the Nominet Dispute Resolution Service can be found here
[nominet.org.uk...]

Similarly for International TLDs a dispute has to be raised via WIPO (they certainly arbitrate the disputes anyway) see [wipo.int...]

[edited by: IanTurner at 11:12 am (utc) on July 21, 2008]

[janharders]

did they register the domains on behalf of your client or are they not affiliated? I'm not sure how strong trademarks are on that issue in the .com-tld, at least in germany your client could sue, if they hat a registered trademark that was registered before the other party registered the domain or if their brand is extremly strong (the oil company shell won against a german family named shell, who had registered shell.de, because the most people think of the oil company when they hear the name).
you can always try to buy the domains, of course.

[IanTurner]

From a .co.uk standpoint that shell.de ruling would have gone to the family. (As long as the spelling of the family name was 'shell')

The registration would not have been construed as abusive.