What’s in 74,000 names? Big money (IHT)
The International Herald Tribune reports on the court dispute between EURid and three companies who had between them registered 74,000 .eu domain names. EURid claimed the companies were hoarding them for resale. In a disappointing decision, last week a Belgian court ordered EURid to pay a fine of €25,000 per hour for each name unless it allowed the three companies to transfer ownership of the addresses. EURid has released control of the domain names and is considering appealing. The IHT reports “Thomas Schafft, a Munich-based lawyer who specializes in intellectual property at Lovells law firm, said it was ‘a shame that EURid lost,’ calling the three companies’ attempts to register the names ‘a particularly nasty attempt to abuse the dot-eu system.'” Since the introduction of dot-eu last December, 2.1 million domains have been registered by EURid. More than 250 separate disputes over ownership of individual domain names have been resolved through an arbitration mechanism.
http://iht.com/articles/2006/10/05/business/domains.php