Observed 9 September 2026. Acquisition CLOSED. Four primary substantive records, plus the previously accepted registry-policy packet. Local overlap was completed by root before acquisition; no existing case-r27 Ashiko/PIPCU coverage was found. No complaint form, domain, harmful material, account, paid route or operational endpoint was used.
The public chain has several decision points. Rights holders supply intelligence and evidence; a police policy assigns approval to a senior police officer; registrars and Nominet act under their own terms. A later IPO announcement adds initial assessment and prioritisation before possible law-enforcement referral. These records establish a process and reported activity, not a private complainant's right to compel suspension or proof that the safeguards worked in an individual case.
The actual police administrative instrument
The official [Operation Ashiko Suspension Policy](http[local research file] dated 22 June 2020, version 1.2–20, identifies individual brands and enforcement agencies as intelligence/evidence sources (§2, PDF4). It describes a Nominet agreement for action without a court order, contingent on police investigation and due diligence (§4, PDF6–7). If necessary, brands, representatives or trade bodies confirm infringement (§8, PDF9). Every submitted suspension requires PIPCU Detective Chief Inspector authorisation (§9, PDF9).
The notice asks the registrar to investigate terms breaches and act; after 48 hours without registrar action, PIPCU requests Nominet investigate and act if it finds a breach (§7, PDF8). Its requested duration is a minimum of 24 months, or the domain expiry if sooner. A registrant alleging error should contact PIPCU within the first 48 hours; police reassess and consider remediation, responding only to the WHOIS registrant or documented representative (§10, PDF9). Section11, PDF10 points to police complaints. The policy does not document an actual reversal here.
This is the posted 2020 instrument, not an executed inter-party agreement or proof every clause still governs after later changes. The current-linked 2026 CPP is separately analysed in policy-authority.md. In particular, the older expiry wording should not silently replace the current CPP's .UK minimum-duration rule.
Initial intake changed in August 2025
The IPO's [12 August 2025 announcement](http[local research file] says that from 11 August 2025 the IPO Intelligence Gateway replaces the previous PIPCU referral form for IP rights holders and enforcement partners. Its team first assesses and prioritises submissions. It can develop intelligence itself or refer to a law-enforcement agency; it liaises with PIPCU, Trading Standards and other agencies about possible disruption. College of Policing-trained intelligence officers/managers work with IPO analysts, financial investigators and regional IP Crime Coordinators. Public reporting is separately directed to Trading Standards or Crimestoppers.
Thus a current description that sends every brand directly to the old PIPCU form would be stale. The announcement does not amend Ashiko's named suspension approver, guarantee referral, publish priority scores or establish that every possible intelligence channel must use this form. The form link was observed but neither opened nor used. Read the complete substantive body and publication/update date, reader lines53–75; the retained HTML corroborates them.
A dated account of delivery and its limits
The PIPCU contribution to the official [IP Crime and Enforcement Report 2018–19](http[local research file] PDF59/printed55, describes brand-owner and supplier referrals supported by counterfeit-trading evidence, imaging of websites for evidence, then details sent to Nominet. It reports 32,995 websites suspended for 2018/19. This is an attributed police contribution in a government publication, not independent domain-by-domain verification; exact start/end dates beyond its period label are not supplied in that passage.
The adjacent 32,927 requests / 32,669 from PIPCU cite a November 2018 Nominet report in footnote35. The same volume's Nominet spread, PDF56/printed52, explicitly covers 1 November 2017–31 October 2018. Therefore the figures must not be treated as matched inputs and outputs for one period, or subtracted to produce an error/refusal rate. Both pages were visually inspected from retained original bytes. The neighbouring Operation Creative/IWL and Operation Methone material concerns separate interventions and is excluded from the Ashiko mechanism.
The IPO's [4 February 2022 strategy](http[local research file] the Operation Ashiko paragraph under future challenges, reports over115,000 sites removed from .UK, Nominet administrative checks and registrar implementation. It describes one detective with PIPCU management oversight and no charge to brands/referrers. These are a dated account of resources and delivery, not current headcount, a unit budget, proof of negligible total social cost or a cumulative total to September2026. Its preceding industry-intelligence/IWL paragraph describes Operation Creative; that stronger wording is not imported into Ashiko. The later all-TLD cumulative account root read in the 2025 Impact Issue is likewise not an annual Nominet-only count.
What remains unproved
The evidence separates three questions: who supplies allegations, who approves a police request, and who implements a contractual registry decision. An investigator's reliance on private expertise can influence which sites are examined without granting that supplier approval power. Conversely, the existence of a police sign-off rule does not establish the independence or quality of each assessment. No original brand dossier, completed DCI approval, particular registry determination, named error reversal or reinstatement trace was acquired.
The finite next discriminator is a redacted end-to-end administrative file: referral and supporting evidence, IPO triage if applicable, police due-diligence/sign-off record, registrar/Nominet determination and any challenge/remediation. The underlying police–Nominet agreement and the current Gateway prioritisation criteria would resolve a narrower rules-versus-practice gap. Likely custodians are PIPCU/City of London Police, IPO Intelligence Gateway and Nominet registry/legal operations. No contact was attempted or authorised. Funding, staffing and financial conditions remain the parallel finance packet, not inferred from brand participation.
Source custody and closed routes
referral-captures.json records source URLs, dates, exact reading scopes, original and derivative hashes. Original official HTML was retained for the Gateway and strategy; the government-published 136-page 2018–19 report was retained, but only its cover, PDF56, PDF58 attribution context and PDF59 were text-inspected, with PDF56 and59 visually inspected. No whole-report read is claimed. The full Gateway substantive body and the strategy's Ashiko paragraph/publication date were read from originals; other returned strategy passages do not support new findings.
The police PDF's ordinary GET returned403; that route is closed. Its substantive policy sections2–11, PDF4–10, were read through the successful official reader, plus cover/date. No original PDF hash or facsimile inspection is claimed for that policy. Later generic privacy pages were incidentally returned but were not audited or treated as an Ashiko-specific correction protocol. Existing Nominet failures were not retried. Four focused discovery queries were used; third-party forum allegations, biographies and unrelated Ashiko/IWF names were excluded. No new branch follows this packet before root's forest review.