Boy ordered to give up Narnia website - .Mobi

[ComScout.com]

A SCOTTISH schoolboy must surrender a Web address tied to the Narnia fantasy world, which his father says he gave him as a present, after a ruling by a United Nations arbitrator.

The UN's patent and copyright agency WIPO said the independent arbitrator had ordered transfer of the site, www.narnia.mobi, to the estate of C.S.Lewis, late author of the popular Chronicles of Narnia books.

"We are shocked by the decision," Gillian, the mother of 11-year-old Comrie Saville-Smith told the Scotsman newspaper in Edinburgh after they were given advance notice of the ruling on Wednesday.

"We put up a spirited fight because we wanted to prove that you do not have to hand something over just because someone richer and more powerful tells you to do so," she said.

The case was brought to WIPO by the multi-billion dollar Lewis estate, registered in Singapore, in May as Prince Caspian, the second of a planned series of films of the Chronicles, was about to go on worldwide release.

The estate's lawyers, the US-based Baker and McKenzie, filed the complaint in May after the Saville-Smiths rejected offers to buy back the site, for which they paid £70 ($140) when the .mobi domain went in sale in 2006.

Media in Scotland have portrayed the case as a Narnia-like battle between a family determined to defend what they see as justice and a wealthy corporate giant - a theme some have compared to the "good v. evil" thread in the books.


http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599...23109,00.html#

[Acro]

Tough luck. They shouldn't park it at sedo if it were a gift.