A high-profile domain name dispute came to an end earlier this week. MySpace, the News Corporation-owned social networking site won the right to have the domain name myspace.co.uk transferred to it.

The ruling was made as part of the arbitration process run by the .uk domain registry, Nominet. You can read the full story over on the Register.

At first glance, the outcome looks a bit surprising. The domain’s owner, Total Web Solutions (TWS) registered myspace.co.uk in 1997 - more than a decade ago, and some years before MySpace itself launched. Case closed, surely?

As it turned out, no. The deciding factor in the dispute was not how long the domain had been registered for, but rather what it had been used for during that time.

Here’s the key issue: TWS had placed adverts on myspace.co.uk. These adverts were keyword-driven - the keywords in this case being ones which related to MySpace and social networking. MySpace argued that these adverts meant TWS was unfairly profiting from an association with MySpace, and that this constituted abuse.

To cut a long story short (if you want the ins and outs, the full report is online), the independent expert who made the ruling found in favour of MySpace:

“The income the Respondent [TWS] is deriving from its pay per click links at the site of the Domain Name [myspace.co.uk] derives in part as a consequence of it being able to trade off the reputation of the Complainant [MySpace]. Accordingly the Domain Name in the hands of the Respondent is an Abusive Registration.”

As you’d expect, this has created a lot of debate online. The comments on the Register cover the whole spectrum (with some first class ranting as well) and Stan Schroeder at Mashable remains “unconvinced the ruling was fair”.

As for me, I really can’t decide. My initial reaction was to wonder how MySpace could even have a case, but it’s one of those situations that’s much more complicated than it originally appeared. What do you think? Help us out by voting in the poll (scroll down a bit and you’ll see it on the right of this page), or leave a comment to give your views.

There’s certainly a lesson in this. If you are fortunate enough to own a domain which has something in common with a well-known site, be careful about what you use it for. Any attempt to profit from people getting your site mixed up with the big name could see you lose the domain completely.

UPDATE: This one’s not quite over yet. From the looks of the Nominet site (scroll down to DRS 04962), TWS is set to appeal the ruling and has sent a notice of intent to appeal to Nominet.

This means they they now have 15 days to get in a full appeal notice. That should explain their reasons for appealing and include any new evidence.

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