LinkedIn retrieves Australian domain

US-based business social networking company LinkedIn has taken action to retrieve the Australian version of its internet address from local digital marketing agency Clear Blue Day.

Clear Blue Day managing
director Peter Bray
(Credit: Future Exploration Network)

The agency had registered the linkedin.com.au domain name several years ago, Clear Blue Day managing director Peter Bray told ZDNet.com.au this week, with the intention of using the name to set up a non-profit operation.

Bray said LinkedIn contacted Clear Blue Day several months ago and requested the domain name be handed over. Subsequently, the pair came to an agreement which will see the name transferred to LinkedIn in exchange for the social networking site running a campaign on its global site on behalf of Clear Blue Day.

Bray said as Clear Blue Day had not actually launched the planned non-profit effort, the domain name had been redirecting browsers to LinkedIn's global site, linkedin.com. However, marketing industry sources said Clear Blue Day had at least occasionally used the linkedin.com.au domain name to direct traffic to its own corporate site.

LinkedIn is not the only large, US-based Web 2.0 company to retrieve the Australian version of its global domain name in recent years.

Global social networking giant Facebook did the same in June this year, confiscating facebook.com.au from a local firm after arbitration by the World Intellectual Property Organisation.

YouTube, working through an Australian law firm, did the same in mid-2007, obtaining the rights to youtube.com.au from an Australian student and internet entrepreneur.

Clear Blue Day's Bray said he didn't personally register the LinkedIn domain name, and denied there was any illegitimacy in Clear Blue Day owning the address, as it had legitimate business reasons for doing so. "It wasn't cybersquatting," he said.