The Supreme Court of Sweden ruled upon an appeal filed by the national IIS registry. We are talking about a long-term struggle for the right to manage the national ccTLD .NU. It is worth recalling the background of the issue. In the 1990s, when there were no uniform rules for domain delegation, an enterprising American journalist Bill Semich managed to get the rights to rule the Niue domain zone. This is a small Pacific island, which is part of New Zealand but has the status of a self-governing state entity. Semich managed to convince the authorities of Niue, where the Internet had not yet reached at that time, that the national domain in itself has no value and is something like an international dialing code. An agreement was concluded with him, confirming his rights to the domain.
A lot has changed since then. The authorities of Niue have realized their mistake and are desperately trying to return the island to its domain. And in 2013, Bill Semich sold the .NU rights to the IIS registry that manages Sweden's ccTLD .SE. The interest of the Swedish side is understandable: in Swedish, the word nu means "now", and domain names in the .NU zone are popular in the country. Now the number of registrations in the domain zone is about 250 thousand, which brings the registry about $5 million a year.
This is a huge amount for the small island of Niue, but the country does not receive a cent from its domain. A group of Swedish human rights activists led by lawyer Per Brumark decided to correct the injustice. They volunteered free of charge to prepare all the documents and represent the interests of Niue. The lawsuit was filed in 2018, but in 2020 was dismissed by the Swedish court of the first instance. Human rights defenders filed a complaint with the Swedish Court of Appeal, and last year it overturned the lower court's decision. Now the IIS registry has filed an appeal, clearly not wanting to part with the rights to .NU. And finally, the Supreme Court of Sweden had its say. He denied the IIS appeal. This means that the lawsuit has been given the green light, according to Domain Incite. The start date of the hearings has not yet been determined, but the lawyers representing the interests of Niue are confident that they are right and are counting on success.
