TechSmec.com

iTunes Domain Battle Over At Last

November 25th, 2005

British entrepreneur, Ben Cohen, who made a name for himself in the boom and bust dot-com years of the 90s, has finally given up his claim to the iTunes.co.uk domain name.

For the last few years he’s been involved in a running battle with Apple over the domain which he registered in 2000, ten days after Apple had registered the iTunes trademark in the UK.

Cohen always claimed the registration was innocent, but he didn’t exactly enamour himself to Apple by firstly demanding $50,000 for the domain, then redirecting it to Napster and finally claiming that Apple users were all members of a ‘cult’.

Well, he has TechSmec.com’s backing on the last point, but the fact that Cohen never built a legitimate website around the domain suggests that he always had the domain’s potential value in mind when it was registered.

Nominet, the UK domain registration authority, has confirmed that legal action has now ceased and that Cohen has given up any claim to the domain. However, defiant to the end, Cohen told The Register that it was ‘might, not right’ that had won the day.

Entry Filed under: Online Life