Porno site causing red faces at Golden Pages

GOLDEN Pages face an uphill battle in shutting down a pornographic site with an almost identical domain address, an internet expert warned.

Surfers accessing the directory website will stumble into the porn site if they type www.goldenpages.com instead of .ie, a situation that has left management deeply unhappy and led to apologies to customers.

Senior executives are in discussions with legal representatives as they attempt to work out whether action can be taken.

But registration manager at IE Domain Conor Maguire said the company faced an uphill task. "It's really not for me to say, but personally I believe, with regard to dot coms, unless a company has a trademark registered worldwide, it's first come, first served," he said.

One possibility would be to appeal to the international internet arbitration board WIPO, which can rule whether a particular name or brand is so well known it can only legitimately be owned by an individual or a company.

One famous case involved film actress Julia Roberts, one of the first film stars to successfully argue her case before the Swiss-based panel.

It may be difficult for Golden Pages to argue along similar lines, because it's not a registered trade mark in the United States although it is sold in a number of other countries under the same name.

A spokeswoman for Golden Pages said she assumed the company, when setting up the internet site, investigated whether .com was available and found it was not.

She said it was only in the last two weeks the company became aware goldenpages.com was a pornographic site and added senior executives were exploring legal action avenues.

"We are unhappy at this and want to apologise to those who unwittingly type into this site when looking for Golden Pages information," she said.