The city of Cork will have to take a Dutch company to arbitration if it wants to continue to fight for the cork.eu domain name. The City Council of Ireland’s second largest city lost its arbitration case against .eu domain registry EURid.

Cork.eu was registered by Traffic Web Holding (TWH), a company with a Benelux trademark, on the term “cork”. TWH applied for the domain on 5 January of this year. Cork City Council filed its application on 11 January but argued that it should be awarded the domain because it filed supporting documentation before TWH did. The arbitration panel rejected that argument.

Cork had argued that TWH “applied for registration of the domain name CORK.eu without rights or legitimate interest in the name,” according to the arbitrator. Cork’s case said that two unsuccessful applications for the domain name CORK.eu had previously been made by an organisation called Parknet, which had the same contact details as TWH. Its applications were based on alleged trademark registrations in Malta and The Netherlands.

Cork also argued that bad faith was proved by the fact that TWH had also registered a number of other city domains, including Prague.eu, Lisbon.eu, Glasgow.eu, Belfast.eu, and Athens.eu, and has lodged applications for London.eu, Paris.eu, and Moscow.eu.