Bakers fails to follow its own advice in Narnia saga
Baker & McKenzie, the firm suing an Edinburgh dad on behalf of the CS Lewis estate after he purchased the ‘narnia.mobi’ domain name has not managed to protect its own .mobi domain name.
Bakers has come under fire during the past week for its aggressive pursuit of Richard Saville-Smith, who claims he and his wife bought the narnia.mobi domain name as a present for their 11-year-old son.
But Bakers does not even own its own bakernet.mobi domain name, despite sending out an alert to clients advising them to register their trademarks during the dot.mobi sunrise period. It in fact belongs to Michael Potters, CEO of the US-based Glenmont Group – a niche recruiter specialising in legal technology.
Potters claimed he has no intention of extracting money from Bakers, which is one of his clients, in return for ownership of the domain.
“Two years ago my ex-employee registered a bunch of dot.mobi names in my name,” he said. “There was a frenzy in the US at the time. I’ve no intention of getting money from it.”
Potters added that he had not “earned a penny from this” and would be terminating his ownership.
A Bakers spokesman said he had no knowledge of the site in question.
Readers' comments (3)
Gillian Saville-Smith | 23-Jun-2008 12:43 pm
A present for a CS Lewis fan
Goodness, what suspicious minds…One tries to maintain a sense of humour, but your continued use of the word ‘claims’ about our purchase of the ‘narnia.mobi’ domain name as a present for our little boy clearly implies a more sinister motive! Yet we haven’t tried to or made a bean; we’ve never sold a domain name in our lives. The domain is not ‘parked’ under any arrangement; what some of your readers have been seeing is actually a ‘holding page’ created automatically for unused domain names as common practice by internet registration companies, and not listed with any search engines. Here’s 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.” Perhaps what’s more interesting is why companies feel entitled to do this without the knowledge or permission of the domain owners; leading to the sort of confusion at the heart of this case.
Being just nine when we bought the domain, we noticed our son’s birthday this year was around the time of the second film and thought it would be fun then for him and his pals to email each other ‘atNarnia’; sometimes the truth is simple…And if anyone can’t see why a parent would want to give a child who is a fan of the CS Lewis books the magical email address ‘atNarnia’, then that is a degree of cynicism to which we cannot really relate! As a fan of the books myself, I know how thrilled I would have been to have a real postal address in Narnia... Gillian Saville-Smith
Unsuitable or offensive? Report this comment
Robert Morgan | 23-Jun-2008 7:06 pm
Narnia
The second paragraph of Mrs Saville-Smith's posting reminds me of John Lennon's explanation for the title to the song 'Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds'.
Far from the first letters being a veiled reference to LSD, as the pundits thought, he was emphatic that the title was no more than the product of a little boy's fertile imagination. QED.
What would Aslan make of all this? Let children be children, methinks!
Unsuitable or offensive? Report this comment
Michael | 24-Jun-2008 4:15 am
misplaced suspicion
Don't let the bastards get you down Gillian - wonderful idea for a present and I hope your son continues to enjoy it. It's a shame that even the most innocent motives can be viewed with such cynicism.
Unsuitable or offensive? Report this comment