Baker & McKenzie vs 11-year old in Narnia IP row
A couple from Edinburgh being threatened with a law suit by Baker & McKenzie over their son’s 11th birthday present has received offers of Pro Bono advice from three law firms, The Lawyer can reveal.
A couple from Edinburgh is being threatened with a law suit by Baker & McKenzie over their son’s 11th birthday present.
Gillian Ferguson and Richard Saville-Smith bought the narnia.mobi email domain name in 2006, so that their son, an avid fan of the Chronicles of Narnia books by author CS Lewis, might receive emails at that address direct to his mobile phone.
Richard Saville-Smith said that a firm from England, Ireland and Scotland respectively have offered to assist the Scottish family pro bono, but that while he was grateful for the offers, he was confident that he and his wife could take on Bakers alone.
“Once you get over the initial shock of the complexity of the rules and the number of pages, WIPO (World Intellectual Property Organisation) rules are fairly clear - the burden of faith is on the them. We’re not being intimidated by the world’s leading law firm.”
Saville-Smith would not name the three firms in question.
However he added that the 128-page legal complaint, prepared by the New York-based partner Lisa W. Rosaya was “not very clever.” He said: “They’re throwing jargon around.”
But Baker & McKenzie, representing the CS Lewis Company, owner of the Narnia author’s estate, claims that the couple acted in “bad faith”.
According to Saville-Smith, the document issued to the couple claims that “the domain name was registered and is being used in bad faith”, and “narnia.mobi domain is being used for the Respondent’s commercial gain”. The father denied that he, his wife or son stand to gain commercially from ownership of the domain name.
Saville-Smith pointed out that the CS Lewis Company failed to take advantage of a sunrise period in which to buy up the dot mobi domain name.
“Bakers issued a client alert in 2006 about the dot mobi domain names. They had a three-month period to buy it and they screwed up. If they do take my son’s domain name away we’ll go through this all again.”
Baker & McKenzie declined to comment.
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Readers' comments (22)
Gillian Saville-Smith | 23-Jun-2008 10:36 am
Your suspicious minds...
Goodness me, what suspicious minds, as the song says! We haven’t tried to or made a bean! The domain is not ‘parked’; you are seeing a ‘holding page’ created as common practice by internet registration companies, and not listed with any search engines. Here is the statement from the registration company going to WIPO: “I am happy to state on behalf of Fasthosts that the redirection of the domain name narnia.mobi to a holding page maintained by [parent company] Sedo was not the result of a request on the part of Richard Saville-Smith. I am also happy to confirm that Richard Saville-Smith has not sought to benefit and has not benefited financially in any way whatsoever from this domain name through this redirection.” Clear enough now?!
We’ve never sold a domain name in our lives. If it’s anyone’s business, we have quite a number of domain names as we have quite a number of businesses and interests – e.g. we have run a media consultancy exclusively for charities for ten years – we are launching an internet poetry venture – and a major new children’s charity – along with various related to me as poet and columnist – and, of course, we bought some light-hearted ones for presents to allow amusing email addresses. Not very sinister. The Narnia domain was available when the new ‘.mobi’ domains went on general sale to the public as the CS Lewis Company failed to register it in the private three month period given to all trademark holders. Being just nine when we bought the domain, we noticed his May birthday this year was around the time of the second film - and if you can’t see why an email address ‘atNarnia’ is magical for a boy who is a fan of the books, then you’re not a fan yourself… We’d like to say how we have been overwhelmed with offers of legal support and thanks SO much to all of them. Especially the fantastic Matheson, Ormsby, Prentice who are kindly sorting out our amateur Response for Monday’s deadline. Gillian Saville-Smith
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James, Bristol | 23-Jun-2008 9:23 pm
Suspicion justified!
Yes, they haven't made 'a bean' yet, they were clearly hoping for a nice pay-off from the CS Lewis Estate!
Why would they register 'thequeen.mobi' and 'uspresident.mobi' as well if not in the hope of making 'a bean' at a later stage? Funnily enough, that is precisely what domain speculators do! I can't believe there are lawyers falling for the child angle and offering free help, quite depressing really.
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