Legal Question in Technology Law in Australia

Domain ownership and obligations as a consultant?

Hi,

I've previously done work for a customer back in 2005, and at the time i registered a domain, under my name, and provided them with hosting service, for the period of nearly a year and a half, after that they chose to move to another isp, at the time i couldnt provide the domain auth code because my registrar couldnt provide it to me, as time went on it was forgotten about, and i lacked to renew the domain, so it expired, 50 days later, the company that at the time i registered on behalf of calls me and complains that it wasnt renewed, and so i did my best to find out what i could do to help (and note, i've not charged them anything) and bascily sent off some emails, and then this monday just gone, they call up to find out what the go was, and i said i havnt recived any response from my registrar (which i hadn't) and they said if i didnt get it sorted by today that the next call i would recive, would be from their lawyer, now here's the thing, im trying to help them, i havnt charged them, as far as im concerned, they dont use my hosting, and as of 8 months ago, are not my customer, there was never any contract signed between us, and im the registered owner of the domain, so where do i stand?


Asked on 5/21/07, 7:23 am

1 Answer from Attorneys
Jeremy Malcolm iLaw

Re: Domain ownership and obligations as a consultant?

There are arguments both ways. You have a pretty good argument that after they left you for another ISP, your contractual obligations to them came to an end (note it doesn't matter that you had no written contract, because there was clearly a verbal contract in place).

On the other hand since you still had the domain registered in your name they could argue that retained some duties (like the duties of a bailee, someone who minds someone else's goods for them), and so you were negligent in not renewing the domain.

In turn, a counter-argument to that would be that they contributed to their own loss by waiting 50 days before doing anything about it.

This is not really a simple case unfortunately. :-( I think you have pretty good prospects, but if they did take you to court (unlikely, unless the domain is really valuable) you would need to get some legal help to defend yourself.

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Answered on 5/22/07, 2:07 am


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