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Santa Clara, California - (Cheap Web Hosting Directory) - February 24, 2006 - According to published reports, Switzerland wants its domain name back. Swiss authorities have filed a complaint with the World Intellectual Property Organisation, in an attempt to win the rights to the country’s proper domain name.

The Federal Chancellery said it was seeking control of the Internet domain names schweiz.ch, suisse.ch and svizzera.ch -”Switzerland” in the Alpine country’s majority German, and minority French and Italian respectively.

Since 1999, the United Nations‘ intellectual property body has been empowered to settle disputes over ownership of Internet names.

The three Swiss names in question were registered in 1995, and currently direct visitors to a website run by Zurich engineer Stefan Frei - which sells accessories marked with the country’s red and white flag, in addition to patriotic images for mobile telephone screens and a ringtone version of the national anthem.

The site also provides an e-mail service and information about Switzerland’s political system and history.

The Swiss government, however, plans to create an official Internet portal in all four of the country’s official languages, to go alongside the existing site admin.ch. Swiss authorities own svizra.ch - the domain name in Romansh, which is spoken by just 0.5 percent of the population - according to Corinne Schaerer, a government legal official.

The English-language version: switzerland.ch - belongs to Switzerland’s national tourist board.

Mr. Frei, who said that he had been contacted twice, claimed that officials only got interested after Swiss television covered the issue in 2001. He noted that at the time authorities told reporters that they had no problem with his site provided it steered clear of government-related content.

To learn more, please visit: www.schweiz.ch, www.svizra.ch or www.switzerland.ch.