Firm collars lassie.com name

Lassie can go home.

A U.N. agency in Geneva has ruled that ownership of the lassie.com domain name must be handed to New York-based Classic Media Inc., the firm that owns rights to the popular TV series about an adventurous collie.

Classic Media filed a complaint to the World Intellectual Property Organization over the use of the star dog’s name as part of the Internet address of a site registered by Warren R. Royal of Cumming, Ga., the agency said this week.

The panel, which started in 1999, allows those who think they have the right to a domain to gain control of it without having to fight a costly legal battle or pay large sums of money. It ruled that Lassie has been an American icon since the first story about her appeared in 1938.