South Africa won a major battle last week when the New York district court of appeals ruled it could institute arbitration or court proceedings anywhere in the world to challenge the registration of the geographical domain name www.southafrica.com by a private company. The ruling follows an appeal brought by Virtual Countries against a decision by the US District Court for the Southern District of New York, that a foreign individual or entity did not have the right to register the domain name. South Africa asserted that domain names of sovereign nations belonged to them as essential identifiers and individuals, and entities unaffiliated with that sovereign country had no right to register these domain names.
