The High Court in London has rejected an application for a Judicial Review into the ownership of the itunes.co.uk domain.

In June, Benjamin Cohen - who registered "itunes.co.uk" in November 2000 some three years before Apple registered the name "itunes.com" - announced he was seeking a Judicial Review of Nominet's ruling in March forcing him to hand over his itunes.co.uk domain to Apple.

That ruling decided "that, by associating the domain name with Napster (a competitor of Apple Computers Inc), and that by offering to sell the domain name for sums far in excess of its original costs, the registration of the domain name was abusive".

However, the boss of the Cyberbritain Group Ltd wanted Nominet's ruling overturned and improvements to the way that the .uk domain registry handles disputes.

Today, though, Nominet announced that Cohen's call for a Judicial Review had been rejected.

"The judge noted that the application was flawed in several respects, being both late and unnecessary given the right of appeal which forms part of Nominet's Dispute Resolution Service, which Mr Cohen had failed to use," said Nominet in a statement.

In a statement Edward Phillips, Nominet's solicitor said: "I am pleased that the judge has rejected Mr Cohen's case at the first possible opportunity, which leaves no doubt that it was without merit. We will now be looking at recovering our costs of defending this unnecessary action."

Cohen now has seven days to apply for an oral hearing or the matter is closed.

However, he told El Reg: "CyberBritain is considering its options together with its legal team. It is currently reviewing the decision and is strongly considering making an application for an oral hearing.

"We refute Nominet's allegation that it was an unnecessary action and hope that in the case of an oral hearing being pursued, the inherent unfairness of Nominet's dispute resolution service becomes apparent." ®

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