Nominet Wins Membership Fee Claim - This Is How

As you may have heard, in late April Nominet were able to successfully resolve a claim against them in the County Court for charging unlawful yearly membership fees. Up until today, the reasons for that weren't public, but, after a slight bit of confusion, I managed to get hold of some publicly available documents from Cardiff County Court. I won't make them available here, but I will give a summary.

The original claim centred on a Nominet member's view that Nominet’s Articles of Association and bye-laws were unlawful. Based on that belief, the claimant argued that Nominet should not have been charging membership fees - specifically the £500 joining fee and the £100 annual fee. While there may be some merit to the argument, the main issue is that such a claim should have been brought over 20 years ago to have any realistic prospect of success. I believe that is what lay at the heart of Nominet's Defence - and I do have sympathy with that too. You can't unwind 20+ years of changes, it's just not practical. I have previously written my view on a couple of things here:

WeightedVoting.uk is Misleading Nominet Members
and
Nominet Wins Appeal Against WeightedVoting Member

I’ve mentioned on several occasions that third-party actors remain involved, still pursuing personal grievances that date back to the 2005-2011 period. Unfortunately, the Claimant has become entangled in those old disputes - and it’s likely to cost him a considerable sum.

Back to the present day - Nominet successfully had the claim against them struck out - but why?

As it turns out, the Claimant failed to comply with the Judge’s directions, ignored them a few times, and on the final occasion, the claim was struck out.

As mentioned earlier, I won’t publish the documents directly here due to potential Crown Copyright restrictions. However, I did run them through ChatGPT to get its independent view of what happened - and its analysis aligned with my own thoughts after reading of the documents supplied by the Court.

The claim in Case Number 423MC115 (Curon Davies trading as Parth.Cymru vs. Nominet UK) was struck out by the court on 28 April 2025 for the following reasons:

Summary of Events Leading to Strike Out:

Original Direction – Disclosure Required:

The court ordered the Claimant to serve a list of documents for standard disclosure by 4pm on 13 February 2025.

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The Claimant failed to comply, and did not meet the proposed extended deadline of 19 February either.

Unless Order – 26 February 2025:

The court issued an “Unless Order” stating that unless the Claimant served the disclosure list by 27 February 2025, the claim would be struck out and judgment entered for the Defendant.

The Claimant eventually submitted a list dated 27 February, but that triggered another step—providing inspection of those documents.

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Second Unless Order – 7 April 2025:

The Claimant was ordered to allow inspection of the disclosed documents by 4pm on 28 March 2025.

This was a condition to continue with the case and proceed to trial.

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Final Order – 28 April 2025:

The Claimant did not comply with the inspection requirement and made no application for relief from sanctions.

The court noted no communication with the Defendant or court to rectify the failure.

As a result, the court:

Struck out the claim.

Allowed the Defendant to withdraw its counterclaim (which was only to offset the Claimant’s claim).

Vacated the trial.

Ordered the Claimant to pay the Defendant’s costs, subject to assessment.

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Conclusion:

The claim was struck out due to repeated procedural non-compliance—specifically, failing to meet deadlines for disclosure and inspection of documents. The court applied a standard Civil Procedure Rule: failure to comply with an “unless order” automatically results in strike-out, unless relief is granted (which the Claimant did not request).

ChatGPT

The above is presented without comment on some of the individuals involved. You all know that I'd love to say more, but I'm limited to what I can say here. For legal reasons (not trademark related) I can't even mentioned some of the names of the people involved.

You'll understand why later.