According to numerous reports today, Nominet the body responsible for UK domain name registrations the equivalent to VeriSign for .com domains, ” took down 1219 .co.uk domain names at the request of the Metropolitan Police’s Central e-Crime Unit (PCeU)”.

As a result, all the sites have been taken down at the registry level to prevent re-registration.

The websites associated with the domain names were allegedly run criminal gangs that  purported to sell designer items, including Ugg  boots, Ed Hardy clothing and jewelry from Tiffany & Co and Links of London.

The police say shoppers were tricked into spending millions of pounds receiving either nothing at all or counterfeit products.

According to law enforcement, the vast majority of the sites were registered in China and other countries in Asia, mostly using false or misleading details.

The websites that were closed are listed here.

Interesting that in the UK this action was taken without a court order or even a hearing.

That of course would not fly in the US, except in the Commonwealth of Kentucky.

However that’s not to say the same result could not be achieved in the US, just that the process would take a different path.

Actually a similar result was obtained a few weeks ago, in an action bought by trademark holders against sites selling “fake” merchandise.

In that case, a Federal Court in Miami ordered the registrars of the domains that were found to be selling fake goods, to transfer the domains to the plaintiff trademark holders.

In the even the registrars failed to comply with the court order, the court further ordered, that the  the central registry VeriSign had to transfer the domains to the trademark holders.