Be careful if you are contacted by a company that tells you that you have to pay intellectual property rights for the ownership of your domain name. This is most likely a dishonest practice.
DNS Compagnie
During the last month, several domain name holders have informed us that they have been contacted by a company presumably called DNS Compagnie. This company explains to them that domain name owners have to pay intellectual property rights on their domain name. This information is obviously false, as domain names belong by right to those who register them. Following this conversation, DNS Compagnie sends an invoice of approximately 300€ that you should not pay.
IDS Belgium, DNS Benelux, ....
We encourage you to be very vigilant about these practices. These seem to be the same people that we’ve had to deal with in the past coming back. It seems that the people behind DNS Compagnie are the same as the people behind IDS Belgium and DNS Benelux. Each time we find the same registration details for the website from the Netherlands. Each time we can see the use of approximate French, and errors in the information on the site. DNS Benelux, as you can read in the linked article, has already been condemned by the court of Liège for similar facts on June 20th 2019. Based on the information we have, it appears that DNS Compagnie is just another iteration of this same problem.
What should you do if you've potentially fallen victim to this kind of practice?
If a company contacts you and explains that you need to pay an intellectual property fee, don't do it. You should never pay an intellectual property fee for your own domain name.
Filing a complaint
You can file a complaint about this type of practice via the FPS Economy contact point.
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