Nominet has obtained an Australian Federal Court order to freeze the assets of two men who attacked the internet registry’s database and used the information to send thousands of "deceitful" invoices.

Bradley Norrish and Chesley Rafferty, who called themselves "the UK Internet Registry", have been prevented from transferring assets out of Australia or transferring them to third parties, ahead of a hearing to determine how much they will pay for breaching copyright of Nominet’s WHOIS database.

The database is used by British internet users to check who has registered internet addresses that end with the .uk suffix.

The "data mining" attacks, which occurred in 2003, captured details of registered owners of British internet users. They resulted in 50,000 domain name registrants receiving misleading notices from UK Internet Registry regarding their registrations.

The scale of the attacks forced Nominet to suspend its WHOIS system for the only time in its six-year history.

Last year an Australian judge said the notices sent by UK Internet Registry were "nothing less than deceitful" and ruled against Norrish.

The organisation claimed the judgment confirmed Nominet's authority to impose terms and conditions on the use of the data it holds.

"We are delighted by this result, particularly as it upholds our ability to protect information relating to .uk registrants," Lesley Cowley, the managing director of Nominet, said.

"Naturally, we want to control use of the intellectual property that we hold and to have succeeded in protecting our copyright ownership is a significant outcome for us, the industry globally and for registrants who do not want to receive scam notices.

"By fighting, and winning, this case we are saying very clearly that scamming is a serious industry issue which will not be tolerated and anyone caught doing it will be pursued and brought to justice."

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