An Edinburgh couple have lost a battle with the estate of Chronicles of Narnia author CS Lewis over a web domain name.

Richard Saville-Smith paid £70 for the name www.narnia.mobi so his son Comrie, 11, who is a CS Lewis fan, could use it for his e-mail address.

But the company which owns the rights to the late author's work lodged a complaint with the World Intellectual Property Organization.

It ruled that the domain name should be transferred to C.S. Lewis (Pte) Ltd.

'Clear statements'

Mr Saville-Smith's wife Gillian Ferguson said she was shocked by the decision.

She said: "It should have been pretty straightforward.

"They had to prove that we had made a bad faith purchase, that we had been using it to make money.

"We provided very clear statements from the internet registration company saying that we had not tried to make any money and yet somehow he has just simply ignored the evidence."

"We have not done anything illegal or wrong, we were perfectly entitled to have this domain name"
Gillian Ferguson

She said she thought the WIPO had decided to transfer the domain name because the company has other Narnia trademarks.

"It did not really matter what we said," Ms Ferguson added.

"They should have to prove it but unfortunately they ignored the evidence and did not accept that an e-mail address for a child was legitimate use."

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

Ms Ferguson said: "We have not done anything illegal or wrong, we were perfectly entitled to have this domain name.

"There was three months in which they could have registered this. There was a private period for any trademark holder to register any .mobi domain name when they went on sale in 2006.

" We did not buy ours until after that three-month period had expired and it was open for public sale.

This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation