Family in battle over web address

An Edinburgh father who bought a website domain name for his son is facing a battle with the estate of Chronicles of Narnia author CS Lewis.

Richard Saville-Smith paid £70 for the name www.narnia.mobi so his son Comrie, 10, who is a CS Lewis fan, could use it for his e-mail address.

But now CS Lewis (Pte) wants the name for itself.

A complaint has been lodged with the World Intellectual Property Organization.

Mr Saville-Smith's wife Gillian, who is a poet, said: "We were saving it as a surprise for our little boy's birthday - to coincide with the release of the new Narnia film - so that he could have one of the coolest e-mail addresses in the world.

"Our whole family are great admirers of CS Lewis and he must be turning in his grave about all this."

Commercial gain

In 2006, companies had a three-month period to express interest in .mobi website names before they were made more widely available.

The couple bought the Narnia name, along with a number of others "just for fun", including TheQueen.mobi and USPresident.mobi.

Domain name disputes focus partly on whether a "cybersquatter" is using the site for commercial gain, and whether trademarks are involved, according to legal website weblaw.co.uk.

Mr Saville-Smith said he has done nothing at all with the site and has not made "a cent".

In 2005, the bank Citigroup successfully got the name www.citigroup.co.uk back from Jim Davies.

He had bought the name under his company Global Projects Management and received e-mails which were sent to citigroup.co.uk

Last year Google began legal action against Dutchman Marcel van der Werf, who had used "Google" in his domain names.