Payment card firm Maestro International has failed in its attempt to gain control of the domain name maestro.co.uk. The MasterCard subsidiary lost an appeal against a ruling in favour of a man who owns many other domain names that match famous brands reports Out-Law.com.

Nominet refused to overturn a previous ruling which let Mark Adams keep the domain. Adams is a Milton Keynes-based web designer and domain name dealer.

Maestro argued that Adams was responsible for a series of domain name registrations that were close to other people’s brands, and that his registration of maestro.co.uk was abusive.

The appeal panel ruled that it did not prove the case that the registration was abusive, and that because maestro is a normal word with a dictionary definition it could not monopolise its use in domain names just because it also happened to be one of its brands.

To read the complete article in Out-Law.com that gives a good explanation of why the Maestro international failed to win the domain name, see out-law.com/page-8789