Employee registered domain in his name and left.. now what?

I just want to add a note of caution.

You say only that the ex-employee is refusing to hand over the login details for his account with a domain registrar.

That's completely reasonable.

It doesn't necessarily matter that this specific domain's WHOIS is labelled with his email address at your company; that doesn't automatically mean that his account with the registrar is any sort of "company account", or even that his login details relate to your company.

He may have other domains on there that are none of your business. You have no right to his account.

What you need to do is ask him to transfer the domain out of his account and over to you. Until you have actually asked for this (as distinct from asking him for his username and password!!), I wouldn't go down any more serious routes.

If [email protected] is on your company domain, then you should be able to access those emails and have a password reset by the registrar. You can then log in and transfer back to a generic company account and manage it that way.

If you don't have control over that domain's emails then you'll need to contact the registrar and ask them to help. https://www.registry.net.za/content.php?gen=1&contentid=31&title=Disputes explains the Domain Name Dispute Resolution for .ZA domains if it gets to that, but the registrar can probably help before you need to go down the legal route.

This seems to be quite a common occurance with small businesses and cowboy web developers. If he bought the domain while employed for the company it is almost certainly their property even if he used his own details. Taking an asset of a company is covered by many laws relating to IP and/or theft although the specifics depend on your locality.

In my experience the threat of legal action is often enough to get them to hand over the relevant details to pass control but you need to get proper legal advice.

Domain name dispute resolution is not really appropriate as it deals with parties with a claim on the domain, in this instance the registration should already belong to the company. It is also quite an expensive route to take and you won't be able to claim the costs back.

Trying to reset the password (if the address is still in your control) would be a much simpler path and would be a good idea to try before resorting to any of this.