As a general rule, if available, we would advise you to register both the .com and .co.uk. version of your domain name, and possibly the .org and the .net just to take them out of circulation. Only UK companies registered at Company House can register .plc.uk and .ltd.uk domains – if you are registering one of these two domains you must use your exact company name.

If you’re experiencing difficulties with regards to domain name ownership or transfer you should contact either Nominet (for .co.uk domains) or Network Solutions (for .com, .net & .org domains) for assistance. For further information you can try Domain Magistrate and ICANN and for details of domain ownership and status search Internic’s database.

What if the domain you want is already taken?

Domain names and trademarks have completely separate registration systems. However, domain names can acquire trademark significance if they are used to identify the source of products or services. Having a trademark does not give you a right to a .com, .org, .net or .co.uk. Surprisingly, in the case of .co.uk domains, the owner doesn’t even have to be a business based in the UK.

How do domains work?

HTTP [Hyper Text Transfer Protocol]

Your web browser (typically Internet Explorer or Mozilla Firefox) asks the central US database (which holds all domains) to locate a domain, e.g. domain.co.uk, the database then tells your browser which domain name server (DNS) holds the relevant information for that particular domain, in this case, domain.co.uk. Your browser then contacts the DNS, which returns the IP address for domain.co.uk, which will be a series of numbers looking something like 255.134.323.43, identifying the location of the web server that stores your site’s internet files. The browser then requests the required file or files from the server, and the server delivers it to your browser for you to view as a page.

SMTP [Simple Mail Transfer Protocol]

Similar to HTTP, when you send an email to for example someone@domain.com, the central DNS server will transfer your message to the correct server where your email for the domain name will be handled.  Differing from HTTP, SMTP works via a separate port on the web server so the two requests are kept separate and depending on what email software is handling mail, messages are then stored in the appropriate folder for collection later.