The US Supreme Court this week ended one of the longest and steamiest battles in the history of the Internet by settling a six-year-old dispute over ownership of the domain name Sex.com.
According to Agence France Presse (AFP), the court`s decision to deny a final appeal for control of the name is expected to set a precedent in the Internet industry for the proprietorship of website addresses.
The article says the bizarre long-running battle over the name was sparked in 1995 when an entrepreneur managed to hijack the name, which was at the time left dormant by its registered owner, and launched an online pornography site.
But the highest US court rejected a bid by Stephen Cohen, who has been convicted of illegally usurping the domain name, to reverse earlier court decisions and return ownership of the lucrative web address to him.
"The Supreme Court`s denial of Mr. Cohen`s writ petition is significant because it puts the final nail in the coffin," Pamela Urueta, an attorney for Gary Kremen, the founder of Sex.Com, says.
"There is nowhere else for him to try to appeal, the judgment is final."
The US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit approved a $65 million damage award against Cohen in September 2002 that opened the door to Kremen regaining control of the domain name.
The AFP article says Cohen allegedly usurped the domain name by sending a forged letter to a private firm called VeriSign, then known as Network Solutions Inc., which registers domain names, and transferring Sex.com into his own name, according to Sex.com and widespread industry media reports.
In return for the forged letter and $1 000, the company transferred ownership of the site name to Cohen, prompting Kremen to launch the long legal battle to win back the name he registered in 1994. But, according to Internet industry media reports, Cohen claimed that he owned Sex.com before Kremen first registered it and that he should therefore retain ownership of it.
Francis Cronje, a partner in Internet and media law firm Buys Inc, says the case highlights the importance of domain name registrars enforcing their own terms and conditions for a public resource such as domain names.
"If the registrars enforce their own rules, this will cut down dramatically on the amount of legal wrangling and the cost to companies and organisations as lawyers` letters are swapped," he says.
Cronje says a possible solution to such cases would be for companies to show that the domain names they wish to use are linked to their own company or product names and that they have done a comprehensive search with the Registrar of Companies to show that no-one else is using that name.
"There is no reason why, for instance, the SA domain registrar, UniForm, should not be linked with the Registrar of Companies," he says.
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