A Narnia-like battle has erupted over a domain name that one party argues will leave an 11-year-old child without a birthday present thanks to greedy, powerful rightsholders. Control of the domain, narnia.mobi, was taken away from its original registrant this week by the World Intellectual Property Organization and awarded to the estate of C.S. Lewis, author of the popular The Chronicles of Narnia series, a decision that the original registrant is referring to as "scandalously one-sided."

Scotland natives Richard Saville-Smith and his wife, Gillian, originally registered naria.mobi in September of 2006, not long after the "sunrise period" for trademark owners to register .mobi domains had closed. Allegedly, they registered the domain in order to give their then-nine-year-old son—a huge Narnia fan—the gift of an e-mail address with "narnia" in it for his 11th birthday. Why 11th and not, say, his 10th birthday? Supposedly, the couple wanted to give it to their son on May 20, 2008, to correspond with the release of the second Narnia film in the UK.

C.S. Lewis Ltd. first offered to buy the domain from Saville-Smith for £70 (about $140), according to The Scotsman, an offer the family rejected. After several attempts to play nicely, the estate submitted a domain dispute resolution request on May 28, 2008 to WIPO. Since then, both parties have submitted a number of documents arguing that they are the rightful owners to the domain. Saville-Smith told WIPO that, since he has no commercial motive for registering the domain, he should be allowed to keep it. However, a handful of evidence seems to have convinced WIPO that he registered it in bad faith.

For one, Saville-Smith registered 12 other .mobi domains just days after the registration of naria.mobi, including middleearth.mobi, ovaloffice.mobi, pentagon.mobi, primeminister.mobi, and uspresident.mobi. (For those who don't recognize some of these names, Middle Earth is a fictional land where stories by Lord of the Rings author J.R.R. Tolkien take place, and Spooks is a TV drama on the BBC). Almost all of these pages were parked at Sedo with plenty of clickthrough advertising on them. Additionally, Saville-Smith registered two more Narnia-related domains on June 17, 2008—freenarnia.com and freenarnia.mobi—long after the dispute over narnia.mobi began.

WIPO stated in its decision that the panel arbitrating the dispute was disturbed that Saville-Smith would register more names that could potentially cross the Narnia trademark after beginning a proceeding over the first, showing that he was not registering them in good faith after all. On top of that, WIPO states that there was no evidence that he had made preparations to use narnia.mobi as an e-mail address before being placed on notice for the dispute, eight days after the son's 11th birthday. Finally, despite Saville-Smith's initial protests, he eventually admitted he had knowledge of the Sedo pages with advertising to WIPO.

With that evidence, WIPO ruled that narnia.mobi was registered in bad faith and ordered it to be transferred to the C.S. Lewis estate. Although the family can appeal WIPO's decision, the Saville-Smiths told The Scotsman that they couldn't afford to continue the legal fight. "We are shocked by the decision," Gillian Saville-Smith said. "We put up a spirited fight because we wanted to prove that you do not have to hand something over just because someone richer and more powerful tells you to do so."