QE2.com has been handed over to Carnival, the world's largest cruise operator, after the Geneva-based World International Property Organisation (WIPO), ruled that its previous owners had no right to the domain name.

The domain was registered in August 2000 by a Virginia, USA web design and hosting company called Prime Choice. The site had not been developed by the firm. Prime Choice did not contest the complaint that Carnival filed against it with WIPO, who ruled that the web design company "lacks rights or legitimate interests in respect to the domain name". It was considered very unlikely that Prime Choice could have been unaware of the associations of the QE2 trademark, which stands for "Queen Elizabeth 2", the name of a famous Carnival ocean liner launched in 1969.

WIPO concluded that "It is difficult to conceive of any plausible actual or contemplated actual use of the Domain Name by the respondent (Prime Choice) that would not be illegitimate or an infringement of the complainant's trademark rights."

WIPO has dealt with about 10,500 cases of alleged "cybersquatting" so far, where domain registrants are accused of having registered a domain name in bad faith, intending to profit from the associations of a trademark or to sell back the domain name to its legitimate owner. Many big brand names have been involved in such cases, including Starbucks and Twentieth Century Fox.