Two weeks ago,
Arabian Business ran a great story on a man whose registration of a .ae web address was taken away from him by the regulator. He said the decision not only put a cloud over the entry of his business into the UAE, but raised questions about the transparency and reliability of the .ae web domain. The story
got a fair
bit of play on
the web.
About a week later, the TRA hit back, saying the man quoted in the story had registered irena.ae (he represents a British nutritional brand called Irena) in the days following the announcement of the International Renewable Energy Agency (Irena), headquarted in the UAE. He immediately offered the site for resale, the TRA said, basically suggesting that we have a cyber squatter on our hands...
Arabian Business quickly
ran a story where the man dismissed the claims. But there seems to be a lot more going on here than it seems.
As covered in The National this weekend:
"Someone of the same name as Mr Reed was caught up in a similar dispute brought to the attention of the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO).
In December 2008, the WIPO panel that resolves disputes over internet domain names said a Kevin Reed and his "alias or accomplice", John Pepin, were associated with more than 3,000 domain name registrations, many of which led to trademark-related disputes.
The judgment came in a case in which Mr Pepin lost the rights to the masdarcity.com and masdarcity.net web addresses, in a dispute lodged by the Abu Dhabi Future Energy Company (Masdar)."
The whole article a pretty fun reminder of how much more is often going on in the background of what looks like a fairly typical story.
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