Highcross Leicester - Highcross Quarter - The Naming Controversy & Domain Name Dispute.

What is the High Cross Quarter Website?

The High Cross Quarter website is a small Wiccan website commissioned by a group of wiccan's lead by a spritely octogenarian "Morrigan Wisecraft" based in and around Loughborough in Leicestershire.

The purpose of the website is primarily to detail the various wiccan sabbats also known as high cross quarters and cross quarters. The website was originally established on two domain names.

• Highcrossquarter.com
• Highcrossquarter.co.uk

With Additional domains set aside for future use

• Highcrossquarter.mobi
• Highcrossquarters.com
• Highcrossquarters.co.uk

Intellectual Property.

When a group of Leicestershire wiccan's (Witches) wanted to establish for themselves a website to talk about their faith and traditions they did not expect that within a year their names and that of their High Cross Quarter website would become so intrinsically associated not only with the £350 million Highcross Leicester or Highcross Quarter as it was called but would also become household names and text book examples for lessons in intellectual property law and trade mark due diligence.

What neither Morrigan, the rest of the ladies of the coven or webwordwizards the web developers and IT Consultants to the wiccan group have ever sought to assert is that Hammerson should not use the name Highcross Quarter for their retail, leisure and lifestyle living development. As far as we were concerned, although bearing in mind what we knew about the meaning of the name, we thought it a little odd once we made things plain to them, that they would name it that, nevertheless, it was their right.

And after all... they owned the Highcross Quarter trade mark and went to alot of trouble, time and expense to establish that trade mark.

Trade Marking due diligence?

Some of us believe that if a trade mark attorney who would certainly, (hopefully,) have been involved in the naming process at Hammerson Plc, had uncovered the fact that the phrase "High Cross Quarter" has some significance in Wicca that Hammerson Plc may not have given that name with such enthusiasm to the centre piece development of Leicester's whole £5 Billion redevelopment master plan.

Whilst it is certainly true to say that even those who consider themselves long term practitioners of wicca may be unfamiliar with the phrase "high cross quarter", it does however manifest itself quite readily in some pretty elementary internet searching... providing you think to split the initial word to its roots. "High" and "Cross".

It is our belief that no one at Hammerson did this. Not until we believe, Mark Prescod (the then Marketing Director) did so during a phone call to us at Webwordwizards.com in August 2007 where we recall a long silent pause after we directed him to verify what we were telling him for himself by checking the phrase in Google.

In the words of one reader of Leicester's "Leicester Mercury" newspaper "How is any developer supposed to know to check the witchcraft calendar when naming a development?". Of course, aside from Morrigan's reply on reading that comment which was "Well they will now" we recognise that Hammerson Plc could not possibly have known this and it would have taken admittedly very able trade mark legal assistance to uncover this information.

It was however there to be discovered, but we can not be certain if anyone had been diligent enough to think of splitting the word Highcross to its roots and putting it into good old Google with the word "quarter". Which someone ought to have done as Hammerson did in fact also file for a trade mark for the split root version "High Cross Quarter".

But what was certain is that Hammerson waited almost a year after us making them a little wiser about all this in August 2006 and then begin to pursue transfer of the names through domain name dispute litigation at UN WIPO and Nominet in June to October 2007. They did this even after announcing they were renaming their development from Highcross Quarter to Highcross Leicester.

Why did Hammerson Plc continue to pursue ownership on the Highcross Quarter domain names after announcing a U turn on the name to Highcross Leicester?

This was something that never did make sense to us or our clients... the ladies of the wiccan group for whom we acted to defend this case. If you have any suggestions for this Webwordwizards.com would very much like to hear from you... please drop us a line to janehart@webwordwizards.com

Are you a trade mark specialist with trade mark law expertise? Do you have any comments on this section? If so Webwordwizards.com would very much like to hear from you... please drop us a line to janehart@webwordwizards.com

Sept 2006 - "Renaming the Highcross Quarter to something else is quite definitely not an option" [Mark Prescod Hammerson Marketing Director ] [Now Ex Marketing Director]

 

"Our clients (the Ladies of the Wiccan group) really are not inclined to use another name or domain name, therefore is it not possible Mr Prescod that Hammerson Plc might choose another name for the Shires redevelopment other than Highcross Quarter?"

That was the question that senior partners at IT Consultants and Web designers, Webwordwizards.com asked him during a conference call that formed part of the initial contacts about the domain name when Hammerson Plc first approached us in pursuit of the highcrossquarter domain names in September 2006.

We put a further question to Mark Prescod the Hammerson Marketing director enquiring if Hammerson renaming the Highcross Quarter really was out of the question or if rather, as he clearly put it was "not an option" "Hammerson ought not consider and explore the option of simply using the hyphenated versions (highcross-quarter.com and .co.uk)" that they purchased on our previous advice when Hammerson first contacted Webwordwizards.com and delicately intimated their predicament to us on July 20th 2006.

Again the Shires (GP) Ltd Marketing chief replied that for Hammerson Plc the Shires parent company, using the hyphenated versions of the internet domain names alone was "also not an option" and that Hammerson Plc really wanted our clients to consider using an alternative name.

23rd July 2007 - 10 Months Later..

Richard Brown, Senior Development Executive at Hammerson Plc was interviewed by the Leicester Mercury and refusing to answer repeated questions as to whether or not our refusal to sell Hammerson the domain names had forced Hammerson to rename the development from Highcross Quarter to Highcross Leicester.

Jenny Cornish and Paul Conroy of the leicester Mercury reported... "Mr Brown said: "I'm not responding to those questions until I've consulted my PR people further.""

The Leicester Mercury then reported him quoting from a prepared statement "Initially, Highcross Quarter was used to describe the development to potential new retailers and to our city centre partners in recognition of the wider city regeneration."It has now evolved to Highcross Leicester, which we believe will give it a stronger identity for customers and raise the profile not only of the development but also the city."

Read more here... Full length article on Exploding the Evolution Theory

 

What is the highcross Leicester (Pdf)

The impacts of the naming controversy and domain name disputes

What is the highcrossquarter.com site about?

Lessons for other small groups...

Other small groups can benefit from the lessons learned by ourselves, Morrigan Wisecraft and the other ladies of the wiccan group who stood to lose their domain names to £7.4 billion Hammerson Plc

Our words of advice as the consultants and web designers upon whose shoulders it fell to defend this case are:

Log conversations and keep records

Always keep any emails or hard copy records you may have surrounding the discussions you have with fellow group members as well as your internet consultants.

Use email rather than phone calls.

Such records are useful in defending a WIPO arbitrated case.

Nominet cases appear to ignore the hard evidence and depend more on the "balance of probabilities" which as the improbable occurs frequently in life would rule out quite a lot including floods in England in July and £7.4 Billion developers inadvertently naming a shopping centre after the highpoints on the witchcraft calendar and then taking umbrage when local witches want to use the name.

Don't be complacent by delaying to register your names...

Although this is no guarantee that you will not have issues at a later date, you should acquire your domain names at the earliest opportunity.

Domain names are in increasingly short supply so if they are available.. get them.

Once you are clear on name for your web project or venture.. you need to move very hard and fast indeed to acquire the domain names especially if you get wind of the fact that someone else may have an interest in them.

As Napoleon once said... "if you are going to take vienna... take vienna" That is very much the mentality you need to adopt about domain names.

Get them all and don't forget the hyphenated names.

A good internet consultant will always know to advise you to acquire all the top level domains pertaining to your web project. This principally means the .com but also the .info, .org and .net. The lower level but useful country domain the .co.uk should also not be forgotten.

A common error by inexperienced consultants is to forget to advise you to consider also the hyphenated domain like this one for this site or for example gum-tree.com. So don't forget to acquire the hyphenated versions of your name if your name uses multiple words.

Plan for the future

Portable information access is the future so ALWAYS ALWAYS get the .mobi domain and if you can not then choose another name. It is that important.

Don't be intimidated by Corporate Goliaths who come after your domain names.

As in our case they may offer ridiculous sums many thousands of times over the actual cost of the names but if you don't want to sell then don't! .

Get advice from a good IT Consultant with domain name dispute case experience and stand your ground on clear principle. "You got there first fair and square"

Remember that the onus is on the complainant to have to prove otherwise.

All being equal (which sometimes as in the lower level highcrossquarter.co.uk case it was not) the decision will be in your favour.