The owner of the itunes.co.uk domain, who is questioning Nominet’s legal authority, has dragged the .UK domain registry to court.

CyberBritain Group chief executive, Benjamin Cohen had refused to hand over the itunes.co.uk domain name to Apple and has said that when he registered the domain in November 2000, he was not aware of Apple’s iTunes trademark application that was submitted just a fortnight earlier. He added that he had wanted to register the site as tunes.co.uk, but since it was already taken up, the registering website suggested iTunes and he took up the same in good faith. Nominet has ordered him to cede the domain name to Apple.

Refusing to do this, Mr. Cohen has questioned the body’s authority and has issued a legal challenge. “I must admit that we were not expecting the decision by Nominet’s appointed expert. Apple chose to launch the UK brand of ‘iTunes’ within the UK with the knowledge that we had owned the name for three years before their USA launch and four years before their launch within the UK. We could have appealed to Nominet directly but with a fee of £3,000+VAT in addition to our legal costs. However, we feel that the procedure that Nominet utilize to settle disputes is unfair and biased towards big business at the expense of legitimate small, British companies. We have decided to refer the decision for Judicial Review in the High Court with a view to overturn the decision and to make recommendations for improvements to the way that domain name disputes are handled within this country,” Mr. Cohen said.

Nominet says that since it is not a public body, it does not fall under the High Court’s jurisdiction, but Mr. Cohen says the under the terms of the 1998 Human Rights Act it is a public body, since the regulation of the internet, which is a public service, affects everyone.

References of interest: www.nominet.org.uk, www.cyberbritain.co.uk and www.apple.com

Online gaming firms PartyGaming and EmpireOnline have both announced that they plan to float substantial IPO’s.

PartyGaming, which owns the PartyPoker website, is planning to announce a £5.8bn IPO. If this plan does materialise, it would be the largest ever float on the London Stock Exchange. Online lawyer Ruth Parasol, her husband, Anurag Dikshit and Vikrant Bhargava, founded PartyGaming in 1997.

This planned IPO will put PartyGaming ahead of Boots, Sainsbury’s and British Airways on market capitalization. It is set to make £1.1bn in cash for the company’s founders. PartyGaming has kept aside £320 million of shares for its staff. The firm said that its 1,100 workers, including those working in the Indian call centers would be entitled to have shares of this launch.

PartyGaming chief executive Richard Segal, said, “PartyGaming is a highly profitable and cash-generative business. Our focus will be to deliver attractive returns for our shareholders through a combination of the growth of the business and through the payment of dividends.”

But analysts say that that around 85 percent of PartyGaming’s revenues come from the US where online gambling is still skirting the fence. Segal however, dismissed these speculations.

Meanwhile, the other online gambling firm, EmpireOnline was non-committal about the exact amount it hoped to raise. Unlike PartyGaming, it is going to sell its shares on the Alternative Investment Market. The site provides marketing services and helps push traffic to online gambling sites. Noam Lanir, an Israeli businessman, is the majority shareholder in the company, while, Leonard Steinberg, founder and non-executive chairman of UK casino operator Stanley Leisure, is the company’s non-executive chairman.

Online gambling has steadily gained popularity over the years, Adrian Scarfe, clinical practice manager at gambling addiction counseling and advice service Gamcare, says, “The internet has its own addictive qualities. Combine that with the thrill of playing cards and large sums of money and you have an extremely complex but dangerous environment. In the last three years we have seen a change. Internet gambling has risen steadily and in my view it will continue to rise.” And due to strict US regulations, London has become the focus of this online gambling boom, “London is one of the key financial centers and also through the passing of the UK Gambling Bill it is a jurisdiction that warmly embraces gaming and online gaming,” Segal pointed out.

Owners of the local classifieds site Gumtree.com seem to have found their anchor in the online auction site, eBay,as reports confirmed that Gumtree.com was bought by eBay today.

Founders of the London-based classifieds site, Gumtree.com, Michael Pennington and Simon Crookall were bankers by profession formerly and created this site after a long struggle, five years ago in March 2000. They had founded this site to assist those people who were considering a shift of location or had recently shifted to London and needed some aid and guidance in looking for accommodation, jobs or acquaintances.

Now that eBay has bought Gumtree.com, the founder duo have reason enough to celebrate, although the financial details of the buyout haven’t been disclosed. This is American firm, eBay’s first foray into the UK classifieds market and by acquiring Gumtree.com, eBay will add yet another feather into its classifieds division cap, Kijiji.

Vice president of European ventures for eBay, Josh Silverman, said, “Gumtree has built a great business over the past five years and it matches the Kijiji model very well.”

Just as eBay is now nothing less than a household name as far as auction sites are concerned, its classifieds division, Kijiji which means ‘village’ in Swahili is also not behind and can boast of operations in over 90 cities across the world.

Meanwhile, Gumtree.com has job sites launched in a number of places in UK like Birmingham, Edinburgh, Manchester, Cardiff and Glasgow, Reading, Guildford, Bristol, Brighton and Dublin. Besides, other of its operations include locations like Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Canada and the Far East. The sites’ London operation is doing considerably well and is able to gather a whopping 1.1 million visits every month. What’s more, the frequency of its visits per month is augmenting by 100% in a period of every six months.

eBay is also known to have purchased another classifieds site, LoQUo.com of Spain, which was founded by Ubaldo Huerta in Barcelona. This classifieds site focuses more on communities, housing, employment opportunities as well as personals.