Family loses Narnia domain name battle

Birthday pressie for son taken back by CS Lewis Ltd

24 July 2008 12:37 GMT / By Katie Scott

A birthday present for an 11-year-old Narnia fan landed a British family in a legal fight, which they have now lost.

Richard Saville-Smith bought the domain name Narnia.mobi for his son's birthday present, but then found himself facing a fight with the CS Lewis' literary estate.

And now the World Intellectual Property Organization has ruled that the web domain name should be transferred to C.S. Lewis (Pte) Ltd.

While the CS Lewis company is keeping quiet, the family has voiced its shock.

Mr Saville-Smith's wife Gillian Fergusson said she was shocked.

She told the BBC: "It should have been pretty straightforward".

"They had to prove that we had made a bad faith purchase, that we had been using it to make money."

"We provided very clear statements from the internet registration company saying that we had not tried to make any money and yet somehow it has just simply ignored the evidence."

She added her belief that whetever the family had proved would have been by-the-by.

"It did not really matter what we said". she added.

"They should have to prove it but unfortunately they ignored the evidence and did not accept that an e-mail address for a child was a legitimate use."

Fergusson concluded: "We have not done anything illegal or wrong, we were perfectly entitled to have this domain name".

"There was three months in which they could have registered this. There was a private period for any trademark holder to register any .mobi domain name when they went on sale in 2006."

"We did not buy ours until after that three-month period had expired and it was open for public sale."