BBC in domain name buying frenzy

Amy Vickers
guardian.co.uk, Thursday January 25 2001 15.44 GMT

The BBC has registered 3,000 domain names - a landmark figure that according to experts must have cost the corporation more than half a million pounds.

Last year the BBC was forced to shell out £200,000 to buy BBC.com from Boston Business Computing and then went to court and won over a cybersquatter using BBCNews.com.

It has also recently secured BBC.tv, a new domain suffix that costs at least £3,000 a year for the privilege of having a TV-related domain.

With international expansion of websites high on the BBC agenda, the corporation is now actively pursuing a policy of securing BBC-related domain names.

Most names are registered with .co.uk or .com suffixes in all countries where the BBC has trademarks, and many more have been registered for shows such as Top of the Pops and Top Gear.

Staff are being encouraged to put forward ideas for new domain names for new products, services or programmes that haven't yet been registered.

"We do not consider it necessary to register every permutation of misspelling of the BBC name in all domain name registries, but we strongly recommend the registration of the names of new products, services or programmes as domain names," said Saul Venit, a lawyer in the BBC's corporate legal and intellectual property department.

Mr Venit was quoted in the BBC's weekly internal magazine Ariel.