THE Earl of Sandwich may be able to boast a formidable list of battle honours behind the family name but he is struggling to defeat an American motel owner in a cyberwar.

He wants to use the Sandwich name on the internet, but a Cape Cod hotelier has beaten him to it. Brian Clifford, innkeeper of The Earl of Sandwich Motel on route 6A, claims that he is fighting for America’s pride in a second war of independence and won’t give it up. Lawyers for the 11th Earl, for their part, say that they are protecting the family name and accuse Mr Clifford of “cybersquatting”.

Mr Clifford advertises his 24-room holiday motel on the internet under earlofsandwich.com, the internet domain he bought about a decade ago, and insists that it is an integral part of the £250,000-a-year business. He said the “strong-arm tactics” being used against him amounted to “an aristocrat still trying to put his thumb on us”. He added that his town, Sandwich, Massachussets, had been on the map since 1637; 27 years before Charles II gave Edward Montagu the Sandwich title.

But Gary Davis, the chief executive of the Earl of Sandwich business, responded: “It’s no different than if someone was using the name Elvis Presley. We want to protect the family name.”

The Sandwich family, as might be expected, sells sandwiches across Britain. It also owns a £2.5 million sandwich shop in Disney World in Orlando and plans to franchise other takeaway stores across the US. Tradition has it that when the 4th Earl demanded feeding, but refused to leave the gaming table to eat, a servant presented him with a slab of meat between two slices of bread.

The Sandwich legal team argue that Mr Clifford and his website are an obstacle to future business plans and threaten to sue unless the hotelier surrenders. They offered to buy him another website — earlofsandwichmotel — but he refused.

Mr Clifford said the skirmish began five years ago when a fax arrived at the motel from Orlando Montagu, the heir to the Sandwich dynasty, saying: “You will appreciate that my father, John, the 11th Earl of Sandwich, and I are keen to protect our family’s identity in the web age by owning the key related domains.”

Mr Clifford threw the letter in the bin.

John Palfrey, executive director of the Berkman Center for the Internet & Society at Harvard Law School, said domain names were first come, first served — with some exceptions. “If someone purchased cocacola.com, for example, without any basis for owning it, that would be considered cybersquatting. If you register a domain with good intent to use it yourself and operate a business, you can put up a good fight.”

The problem is that businesses have already laid claim to most of the appealing names.Mr Davis said that the Earl of Sandwich company was being reasonable, in that it had purchased a domain name for Mr Clifford’s motel and was willing to wait until his stationery and brochures were reprinted. He said that they had offered artwork and historical information that could be displayed at the motel.

Mr Davis added that they had never asked the hotelier to change the name of the motel — all they wanted was for him to give up the domain name.

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