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Narnia domain name battle may not be baddy vs daddy

You are confused between 'parked' domains and a holding page Goodness me, what suspicious minds! We haven’t tried to or made a bean! The domain is not ‘parked under any arrangement with Sedo; they are actually seeing a ‘holding page’ created as common practice by internet registration companies with unused domain names, and not listed with any search engines. We were not aware of this practice or the page until the Complaint. 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.” Perhaps more interesting is why domain registration companies feel entitled to do this without domain owners’ knowledge or permission, as the confusion caused lies at the heart of this case. Clearly, with respect, even the author of this article who presumably works in this area cannot see the difference and wrongly assumes we have created a website to benefit financially.. 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 our son’s May birthday this year was around the time of the second film so thought it would be fun then for him and his pals to email each other ‘atNarnia’; sometimes the truth is simple. And if you can’t see why an email address ‘atNarnia’ is magical for a boy who is a fan of the CS Lewis books, then you must surely consider yourself to be a grand cynic!…Gillian Saville-Smith

23-Jun-2008

6:33 pm