RoyalMint.Co.Uk

Bottle of "Royal Mint" Liqueur

Royal Mint Medallion

royalmint.co.uk...

... was unregistered as at March 1999, a fact that we found incredible, so we registered it ourselves. It took the Royal Mint until 2006 to realise their oversight.

It would be a great domain name for a number of different businesses, for example:-
Bullion dealers
Coin dealers
Coin clubs
Numismatic magazines
The Royal Mint
Mints
Medallists
Confectionery manufacturers
Chocolatiers
Makers of "Royal Mint" liqueur.

RoyalMint.Com
The URL for the Royal Mint's website is www.royalmint.com, and we simply could not believe that any business whatsoever could fail to register both the UK (co.uk) and international (.com) versions of their domain name, when they were clearly available. It strikes us as so unenterprising, dull and unimaginative that it borders on the negligent. Whoever was responsible for registering the Royal Mint's original domain name should be dragged out and shot for failing to think also about the .co.uk version.

Reversion
Eventually, in 2006, we got a nice letter from somebody at the Royal Mint, but no telephone call, asking for it back. Seven years later! This letter did not offer to compensate or reward us for keeping the name safe for them, after all, somebody else could have registered it and used it with ill intent. We thought how to respond, and could not decide between offering it as a free gift, asking for modest compensation, or digging in our heels and using it in a non-competitive manner which would not have harmed the Royal Mint, but which would probably have made it difficult if not impossible for them to claim as their own. In the end we did nothing about it, and did not contest the Royal Mint's application through Nominet's Domain Name Dispute Resolution service. This cost the Royal Mint at least £750, probably with at least the same spent in administrative and legal fees. If the nice man who wrote us the nice letter had taken the time and trouble to talk to us on the telephone, we may well have decided to give them a free transfer, which they probably deserve.