“High Court rejects itunes.co.uk dispute review.

Internet domain names registrar Nominet has been handed a victory in its court case with entrepreneur Benjamin Cohen, who had disputed a Nominet ruling ordering him to give the iTunes.co.uk address to Apple.”

Likely not the final move in the ongoing saga between Ben Cohen and Nominet/Apple, but one that disappointed me.

The dispute has been running so long now that even though I have kept in touch with it I struggle to recall each and every back-and-forth in its history, but I’ve always thought from the outset that Cohen has been manhandled by the courts, Apple and Nominet. Let’s check out the score:

2000, November - Cohen registers the domain for his own business when itunes itself wasn’t in existence, let alone in the UK.
2001, January - itunes comes into existence.
2004, October - Cohen offers to sell the domain to Napster, Apple’s rival, who he was already redirecting 4000 hits to, per day. They declined.

Apple offered him $5000 for it, but he declined and asked for an extra zero on the end. Apple declined.

2005, March - Nominet rules that itunes.co.uk should go to Apple saying that the domain registration was ‘abusive’ (formally cyber-squatting) and that Apple had rights to the brand.

This is despite the fact that he registered it in 2000. Yeah, what?

That would have been the final straw but Cohen made a challenge to Nominet’s impartiality, claiming they had a bias against smaller parties. Today’s decision overturns that.

The www.itunes.co.uk URL currently redirects to www.apple.com/uk/itunes.