A number of estate agency businesses have failed to buy their .uk domain names – which have gone on to be bought by others in the last week or so, it has been claimed.
Countrywide and Winkworth are apparently among those that failed to exercise their rights to buy, in their cases, countrywide.uk and winkworth.uk, which are now in other ownerships. All are said to have been quickly snapped up once they became available.
As a result, agents have lost intellectual property worth tens of millions of pounds, and have also potentially reduced their own value, it has been put to EYE.
CentralNic Group Plc (LON:CNIC) provides registry services, distribution, and strategic consultancy for new TLDs, ccTLDs and SLDs. They use their in-house developed IT platforms to distribute its portfolio of popular domains to a global network of over 1,500 registrars (retailers such as GoDaddy LLC), which sell these to end users.