However, in a twist, more than 100 of those names -- which only came back onto the market last week -- have already been scooped up by a Perth-based Web hosting and online search company, Empius Interactive.
The chief executive of .au Domain Administration, Chris Disspain, confirmed this morning Ansearch had been forced to relinquish the names, which included several trademarked names and misspellings of popular Web destinations.
Some of the names believed to have been confiscated include celebrity-based names such as tomcruise.com.au, pamelaanderson.com.au, brands such as bandaid.com.au or australiaairlines.com.au and misspellings such as yahho.com.au.
While several companies had previously flagged their intention to complain about Ansearch's actions, Disspain was not prepared to comment on who had actually done so. However, he said the regulator would be looking in to the move by Empius, a spokesperson for whom was unavailable for comment.
Registration of such names would have helped Ansearch boost both traffic numbers and brand awareness as it fights for a foothold in the highly competitive search market.
While competing engines such as Microsoft's MSN Search use a similar technique, they do so through browser software such as Internet Explorer rather than the registration of domain names.
Ansearch chief executive officer Dean Jones claimed the company was "happy with the outcome" of the "discussions" with auDA. He said Ansearch was now focussing on marketing its search engine via other channels.
He said auDA had allowed Ansearch to retain domain names relating to specific projects the company planned to roll out in the near future. This, according to Disspain, was around 110 of the 1,200-1,300 in dispute.
However, Disspain took issue with Jones' characterisation of the contact between the two parties over the matter.
"It's not a matter of negotiation as far as we're concerned," the auDA boss said, "it's just a matter of you do what you're supposed to do and that's all there is to it."
only in Australia.