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The domain's previous owner, CyberBritain, was attempting to gain a judicial review into Nominet's decision to grant Apple the domain earlier this year. Nominet ruled that CyberBritain's registration was 'abusive' and took 'unfair advantage' of Apple. CyberBritain's CEO Benjamin Cohen had done himself no favours by admitting that had little use for the domain, trying to sell it to Apple's rival Napster and then trying to sell it to Apple for £50,000.

The High Court judge ruled that CyberBritain's review application was 'flawed, late and unnecessary', given that Nominet already has an appeals process, which Cohen had failed to use.

Nominet will now seek to recover its costs while Cohen said that together with his legal team he is looking at his options.

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It seems likely that he will seek a further hearing.

'CyberBritain is currently reviewing the decision and is strongly considering making an application for an oral hearing,' it said in a statement.

'We refute Nominet's allegation that it was an unnecessary action and hope that in the case of an oral hearing being pursued, the inherent unfairness of Nominet's dispute resolution service becomes apparent.'

Nominet's solicitor said that the case should now be closed.

'I am pleased that the judge has rejected Mr Cohen's case at the first possible opportunity, which leaves no doubt that it was without merit,' Edward Phillips said.

iTunes.co.uk now points to Apple's website and a similar result should soon be achieved in New Zealand, where the company has acquired the itunes.co.nz domain name.

In this case, businessman Dave Goosselink was said to be 'satisfied' after selling the name to Apple and paving the way for the 'long-awaited' opening of the iTunes Music Store in the country. However New Zealanders should not hold their breaths; the anticipated May launch of the store in Australia, shortly after Apple acquired itunes.com.au, never materialised. There was even evidence of the store's existence, after a security glitch that enabled the creation of accounts was discovered before Apple quickly fixed it.