Swiss authorities have won the rights to their country's name in cyberspace after a ruling by the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO).
A WIPO arbitrator awarded the Swiss Confederation control of the internet domain names schweiz.ch, suisse.ch and svizzera.ch - 'Switzerland' in the country's majority German, and minority French and Italian languages respectively.
Currently, the three names direct surfers to a private website which offers a free Swiss-based e-mail service used by 45,000 people and also sells Swiss-themed accessories marked with the country's red and white flag.
The site, which was registered by Zurich engineer Stefan Frei in 1995, also provides an e-mail service and information about Switzerland's political system and history.
Swiss authorities sought the rights to the three names on the grounds that they planned to create an official internet portal in all four of the country's official languages, to complement their existing site admin.ch. Prior to the WIPO ruling, the only name they owned was svizra.ch - the domain name in Romansh, which is spoken by just 0.5% of the population.
The English-language variant switzerland.ch belongs to Switzerland's national tourist board. Swiss authorities filed a complaint with WIPO, a UN agency, in February, saying that they had been unable to resolve the issue in negotiations with Frei. He maintained that authorities had shown no interest in the names until five years ago, and that ending his ownership would hurt the business he had built up over the past decade.
Since 1999, the UN intellectual property body has been empowered to settle disputes over ownership of Internet names.
