New row over Mathew Street Festival - this time over a domain

Dec 7 2007 by David Bartlett, Liverpool Daily Post

ONE of the men primarily blamed for the cancellation of the Mathew Street Festival has become embroiled in a row over the ownership of the domain names for the event’s website.

A letter was sent yesterday to Lee Forde demanding that he surrender control of the websites to the directors of the Liverpool’s Mathew Street Music Festival Ltd.

The directors gave Mr Forde seven days to transfer the domain names mathew streetmusicfestival.co.uk and mathewstreetmusicalfestival.com to them.

Festival directors, Bill Heckle and Dave Jones, maintain the website names, registered by Mr Forde after the 2005 festival, were supposed to be handed over to them two years ago by Liverpool Culture Company.

Now they say that, not only did that not happen, but Mr Forde, who resigned from his events job in June, re-registered both web addresses in his own name on August 29 this year.

Last night, Liverpool city council said he officially stopped working for the authority on August 24.

Mr Forde and ex-operations manager Chris Green took most of the blame for this summer’s cancellation of the Mathew Street Festival in an internal council report into the matter.

Since its publication, Mr Forde has strenuously denied it was his fault and has demanded an independent investigation which he believes would clear him of any wrongdoing.

Last night he said: "They can have the domain names, I am happy to talk to them about transferring them.

“The domain names were bought for £20 each in 2003 as a precautionary measure to ensure that no-one else could use them.

“Everyone was aware of that – no-one can be surprised now. The domain names haven’t been used since.

"They were renewed this year for about £10 with the full knowledge and approval of the Culture Company chief executive.

“But I am sure he would have no objection to them now being transferred."

Last night, Mr Heckle said he applauded Mr Forde’s prompt decision to hand back the domains, but questioned his motives in re-registering the names in August. Intellectual property specialist Francis McEntegart, managing director of Chime Management, is representing the Liverpool Mathew Street Music Festival company.

He said: “You have to ask the question what Lee Forde was doing registering the domain names in his own name when he was working for the council?

“The fact that he actually re-registered this year also begs the question of what he was thinking as it is not an automatic process and you have to make a payment.

“The act by Mr Forde is a potential infringement of my client’s registered trademark ‘Mathew StreetFestival’.

“I can see no justification for him to have these domain names registered to him.

“I expect Mr Forde to transfer these domain names to my client immediately.”

He said his clients had not been in touch with Mr Forde previously about this matter, because they were “nervous” about what might happen.

davidbartlett