Mainline Flatpacks has made a complaint to internet management company Nominet’s dispute resolution service over domain names that have been registered by a director of rival Board Envelopes.

Mainline managing director Barry Lill told PrintWeek that he had acquired a list of domain names registered by Board Envelopes' Richard Hayden off Nominet - which stores and sells information in a similar fashion to Companies House - after noticing that Hayden had registered for a domain name containing the word "mainline".

Lill alleged that this list showed that Hayden had registered a number of domain names that included the word "mainline" and others that included the names of other envelope companies such as koverto.co.uk and impact-envelopes.co.uk.

As a result, Lill has made an official complaint to Nominet’s Dispute Resolution Service.

Lill added that he has "history" with Board Envelopes, as a former Mainline employee had bought Board Envelopes some years ago. "We bought the domain name boardenvelopes.co.uk in retaliation as there was not much else we could do," he said.

Lill added that there had been ongoing problems over this domain with the subsequent owners of Board Envelopes, but that he would not be handing it over because Mainline sold board envelopes as part of its product range.

Lill said he had also been in contact with a number of other envelope companies which he felt could be also be affected by some of the domain names that Hayden had registered for.

When contacted by PrintWeek, Hayden admitted that he owned "very many" domain names, which covered many businesses and interests, and said that this practice was quite common. "However, if any of these names is in contravention of the appropriate domain name rules then this is certainly unintentional and I am of course only too willing to try to put things right where necessary," he added.

He confirmed that Mainline had raised a complaint through Nominet and that he had responded to it. "To the best of my knowledge no other actions have been brought against me," he said.

"Mainline has, however, openly admitted in their complaint that the domain names in question are 'just holding pages'." He said he was considering whether to raise a counter-complaint against Mainline.

A spokesman for Nominet did not deny that the case existed but said it could not make any further comment at this stage out of respect for the privacy and confidentially of the two parties.

The spokesman added that with any case it was only once the two parties had reached an agreement, or a binding adjudication had been made that Nominet would make any details public.

A statement on Nominet’s website says it cannot provide independent legal advice, but that there is no law that specifically deals with the use of domain names. "Although many laws to do with trade marks and which control restricted terms (dentists, Olympic rights, red cross and others) can have an effect on the choice of a domain name," it states.

Meanwhile, Simon Fisher, a director of Ace Envelopes, said he had also been in touch with Hayden in the past over domain names he had registered for, but added that the situation was "pretty much sorted now".