THE Road Safety Authority (RSA) has failed in a bid to have the drivinglicence.ie website forcibly removed from the ownership of a private company and placed under its control.
The RSA, which is launching new credit-card-style driving licences next month, applied to an arbitration body in an effort to seize control of the domain.
It contended that control of the drivinglicence.ie domain was “key” to its role in administering the state’s driving licence system.
In a ruling published on its website, the World Intellectual Property Organisation, a UN agency, ruled the term “driving licence” was not a “protected identifier” in Ireland and the term was not distinctive of the RSA or its services.
The drivinglicence.ie site has been owned by by Adrian Demian and Peter