Dutch court orders Horwath HIR to restore Crowe Peak's suspended domain
in plain words
A Dutch court said a company was wrong to turn off a web address that another firm used for email and its website. The two sides were arguing about who could use a famous name. The court told the company to switch the address back on quickly.
Full summary
The Rotterdam District Court issued its ruling on 16 October 2026 in summary proceedings between Crowe Peak, an accounting and tax advisory firm, and Horwath International Registration, known as HIR. HIR is a subsidiary of Crowe Global, an international network of accounting firms. Crowe Peak had been a member of Crowe Global since 1999 and used the Crowe name, trademark rights and a domain under a licence agreement with HIR.
After a change in the shareholding of Crowe Peak, Crowe Global refused its request to continue its membership. A dispute followed over ending the membership and over further use of the Crowe name and the domain. The parties negotiated a transition arrangement that would allow Crowe Peak to keep using the trademark rights and the domain until 31 December 2026, against payment. They did not agree on how emails sent to the domain would be answered and forwarded after that date. Crowe Peak did not sign the proposed settlement agreement. On 12 October 2026, HIR switched off the domain. Crowe Peak asked the court to restore its access.
The judge found that Crowe Global and HIR were not obliged to accept Crowe Peak's additional demands, including longer email auto-replies beyond 90 days after 31 December 2026, automatic forwarding of emails to a new address, and transfer of the domain to an independent third party from 1 January 2027. The judge said that the lack of agreement did not justify switching off the domain.
The judge said the parties' relationship, which had lasted 27 years through the membership, was governed by reasonableness and fairness. Under that standard, each side had to take the legitimate interest A GDPR ground for processing personal data, weighed against the registrant's privacy rights. Full definition of legitimate interest of the other into account. HIR could reasonably have foreseen that switching off the domain would seriously harm Crowe Peak's operations. Internal and external email through the domain stopped, business applications linked to it became inaccessible, and the firm's website could no longer be reached. Crowe Peak also said these effects were immediate.
The judge also pointed to the short time between a warning email sent on 8 October 2026, which threatened the shutdown, and the actual shutdown in the early hours of 12 October 2026. That period did not give Crowe Peak enough time to prepare. The judge therefore held, on a provisional basis, that HIR acted unlawfully towards Crowe Peak.
The court ordered HIR to restore access to the domain to its state before the shutdown within 24 hours of service of the ruling, and to keep it in that state for 30 days after restoration. HIR faces a penalty of €25,000 for each hour of non-compliance, capped at €1,000,000.