What is Nominet?

The discrimination case was brought by Emily Taylor, formerly Nominet‘s legal and policy director, who said the company had used her mental disability to remove her from mailing lists and company correspondence. She was awarded compensation by the tribunal which ruled in her favour.

But the tribunal has put a spotlight on the rather unusual company, one that also runs a charitable trust which among other causes, has supported projects to help young people’s mental health.

A private, not-for-profit company formed in 1996, Nominet says the government “increasingly recognises the domain name system as critical part of the country’s commercial infrastructure” meaning it is a key component of the national security apparatus.

Nominet manages many domain names with the .uk suffix, such as .co.uk, .org.uk or .net.uk and among other roles, it arbitrates on cases of so-called cyber squatting, where individuals buy up a domain name with the sole intention of selling it to the highest bidder.

It also rules on issues such as that brought by the consumer group Which? against the owner of the which-advisor.co.uk domain name which the charity had claimed was abusively registered – Which? lost the case.

Nominet manages over 10m domain names on behalf of around 2,800 subscribing members who are made up of companies which sell domain names, lawyers and other interested parties. It has an annual turnover of £25m.