Apple beats schoolboy

Apple's attempt to wrest ownership of the Appleimac.com domain name from a Canadian schoolboy succeeded last week when he agreed to hand it over.

Calgary-based Abdul Traya registered the domain name for his own Mac-oriented Web site last summer.

Six months later, Apple began a major move to grab as many Apple-related domain names as possible, and Traya's domain was there in its list.

So Apple sent forth its lawyers to demand Traya surrender his rightfully registered property.

However, the 17-year-old employed legal eagles of his own to force Apple to cough up a measly 30 iMacs for his school in return for the domain name - hardly an act of domain name piracy, for all Apple's claims to the contrary.

Negotiations between the two parties ended last week with Apple agreeing to pay legal costs and make a small payment to Traya, according to Reuters.

In return, Apple gets its mitts on Appleimac.com and ends up spending rather more than it would have done on 30 iMacs - about $500,000 for the lawyers. ®