6th November 2014

Mark Stafford, Partner in our Dispute Resolution Group, has successfully acted for Aston Merrygold, former member of JLS, to recover the domain name www.astonmerrygold.co.uk from a domain squatter. As luck would have it, the decision marks the 10,000th domain dispute to pass through Nominet’s Dispute Resolution Service since it was established over 12 years ago.

The original registrant of the domain first registered it the day after JLS’ appearance in the X Factor final in December 2008, along with similar domain names for the other members of the group. Despite the original registrant never using the domain to host any content, Nominet ruled that the registration was made in order to take unfair advantage of Mr. Merrygold’s rights.

Nominet is the .uk domain name registry for the United Kingdom. It is a not-for-profit business responsible for the smooth and secure running of the .uk internet infrastructure.