Family embroiled in dispute over Narnia name

A SCOTTISH family has become embroiled in an intellectual property dispute with the estate of the author CS Lewis after buying a Narnia internet domain name for their 10-year-old son as a birthday present.

Richard and Gillian Saville-Smith paid £70 (€90) to purchase the domain name Narnia.mobi from the internet registration company Fasthosts in 2006 so their son could have it as an email address.

They were then asked to return the domain name to the CS Lewis company, owner of the author’s estate, but refused, and received a 128-page legal complaint filed with the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) in Switzerland.

“Our whole family are great admirers of CS Lewis and he must be turning in his grave about all this,” said Mrs Saville-Smith, an award-winning poet. “We’d been saving it as a surprise for our little boy’s birthday.”

The family must reply to WIPO by June 23.