13/06/2018

High Court grants domain name injunction to assist victim of alleged cyberfraud

In Qatcom LLC v Stephen Derek Jones and Others [2018] EWHC 492 (Comm), the Claimant successfully applied for urgent interim mandatory and prohibitory injunctions in order to recover certain of its electronic assets, including its domain name.

The Claimant is an online ‘Yellow Pages’ style directory for businesses located in Qatar. It alleged that the First Defendant had engaged in fraudulent misconduct both during and following his tenure as the Claimant’s General Manager, including by (i) misappropriating (together with his wife and a company owned and controlled by him) substantial sums from it, (ii) amending the registration details of the Claimant’s valuable domain name in order that he be identified personally as the sole registrant of the domain name, and (iii) amending or facilitating the expiry of the login credentials/passwords to a number of the Claimant’s key electronic assets including staff email accounts.

Sonia Tolaney QC (sitting as a Judge of the High Court) granted a number of interim injunctions, including mandatory injunctions compelling the transfer of the domain name back into the Claimant’s name and requiring the First Defendant to provide various login credentials and passwords. This is an interesting example of the Court exercising its powers to assist the victim of an alleged cyberfraud.

The Claimant was represented by Sam Goodman, instructed by PCB Litigation LLP.