§ Mr. WillisTo ask the President of the Board of Trade what plans she has to introduce legislation requiring the National Registry of Internet Domain Names to investigate each attempted registration for possible use by dealers to obstruct the company whose trademark the registered Domain Name is related to. [27710]
§ Mrs. RocheThere are no plans to introduce legislation requiring the National Registry of Internet Domain Names (Nominet) to investigate registrations in this way. Existing trademark law applies equally to domain names as to any other use of names, as illustrated by the recent "One in a million" judgment. Competition in the registration of domain names in the UK top-level domain is fully open, and Nominet has a dispute resolution procedure in place to deal with any conflicts over domain names. Nominet is also about to enter into collaborative agreements with conventional trademark watching services, so that they will be able to add domain names to the portfolios they oversee.