In a lawyer's letter sent on behalf of the Bid Committee, which is in News24's possession, it is alleged that the website falsely claims to be an official agent of the committee, its contributors followed Jordaan, and infringed his intellectual property and personality rights.

Briton Damian Dugdale, the owner of the website, has dismissed the allegations as "ridiculous", and has sent a counter-demand to Jordaan's lawyers demanding that he write an apology and pay ?1 100 to cover his legal expenses accrued in responding to the letter.

In the letter sent by Pretoria law firm Adams & Adams, Consultant Don MacRobert said of Dugdale, "you attend various meeting where Mr Jordaan is the guest speaker and then take extracts from his speech and put them out on your website, claiming that you are the authentic agents for World Cup 2010 Bid Committee and that you are the official representative of Mr Danny Jordaan."

"Immediately discontinue this malpractice of following Mr Jordaan, more particularly the quoting excerpts from his speeches, thereby holding yourselves out to be his appointed or official agent, when this is not true at all."

According to Dugdale, "I registered this domain in 2003 to start a petition in support of the 2010 bid that received thousands of names and was ultimately sent to Fifa. I wholly support the World Cup in South Africa and always have.

"I have never attended a meeting where Mr Jordaan has been present and I or this website have never taken extracts from his speeches - we do put up articles but always credit the source and link back to it."

MacRobert conceded, "Maybe we were wrong, but that's the information given to us by our client, and (Dugdale) hasn't told us anything to the contrary."

The World Cup 2010 Bid Committee's lawyers assert that a right infringement remains.

MacRobert said, "Listen, we can't stop every domain name being registered, but when you hold yourself out to be an organisation officially endorsed by the bid committee, there's a clear infringement of our client's rights."

Dugdale has been given until Friday to deregister his domain and close his website, or face, "High Court proceedings... including necessary police action, involving Interpol where necessary."

from News24