'Internet squatter' delays Dunne deal

AN “INTERNET squatter” has delayed the settlement of a legal row between developer Seán Dunne and hotelier John Brennan over the rights to a series of online domain names.

Mr Dunne’s company MJBCH recently settled a High Court action with Mr Brennan’s Cloud Nine Management Ltd and Beechside Co Ltd over the ownership of D4Hotels.com and a number of other domain names relating to the developer’s Ballsbridge hotels. The hotelier had been managing the properties for Mr Dunne.

The settlement was put back in the High Court’s commercial division earlier this week as Mr Brennan’s companies had a technical issue in relation to the settlement.

It is understood that Mr Brennan’s businesses no longer own one of the domain names, Ballsbridgeinns.com, which was to have been transferred to Mr Dunne’s company along with ownership of several other websites.

The site was registered to Mr Brennan’s businesses along with the others in 2007, but they lost ownership of it to a so-called “internet squatter” last year.

Site owners have to renew their registration yearly. Any delay can result in squatters taking over the registration in the hope of selling it back to the original owner, or another party.

Mr Dunne re-opened the Jurys and Berkeley Court hotels in 2007 and hired Mr Brennan, who runs five-star Sheen Falls Lodge in Co Kerry, to manage them.

They operated under the D4Hotels.com brand, which, along with the associated websites, was used to sell online reservations in the hotels. The pair settled their dispute last week.