The tiresome practice of setting up websites with addresses coincidentally resembling those of well-known brands shows no sign of dying out, according to latest figures from the controller of the ‘.uk’ domain. Cases handled last year by Nominet’s dispute resolution service included complaints by classified advert site Gumtree, which successfully challenged the domain name ‘guntree.org.uk’ and lingerie producer Victoria’s Secret over ‘victoriasecretbeauty.co.uk’.

The respondent in the Victoria’s Secret case was a beauty therapist in Mayfair who claimed never to have heard of the Victoria’s Secret brand. ‘This was not a credible claim, particularly taking into account that the respondent operates in the field of beauty services,’ the appointed expert concluded.

Topics