DomainingOnline.com

Maybe it has taken you a lot of time, thought, and effort, but once you have finally found the best domain name for your website and find that it is available, you may think you have it made. Perhaps you have come up with a name that looks very promising commercially, so you grab it because the domain name company told you it was available.

But then after a few weeks or months go by, you receive a letter from an attorney saying that the domain name has violated somebody’s trademark. this means you could be in for a legal battle that could cause all manner of difficulty, like losing your domain name or worse. However, there is a procedure called domain name arbitration that can help you get out of the situation while avoiding a lawsuit.

Domain name arbitration is an out-of-court process where the complainant and the person holding the domain name to work out some reasonable solution about who actually gets rights to the domain name in question. The Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP) does the arbitration itself. This method of arbitration is set forth by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers organization (ICANN). It is used mostly for domain name conflicts because it costs much less than a traditional lawsuit.

If someone wants to initiate a domain name arbitrations procedure, they have to do so through a provider approved by ICANN to handle this kind of dispute. When arbitration begins, the provider will determine whether or not the complainant has a real case. The ICANN representative will evaluate whether the domain name that is disputed is similar to a trademark or a domain name the claimant has.

ICANN will try to determine what right the plaintiff has to the domain name, whether or not the name of the domain was chosen accidentally, or with the intention of riding the coattails of the claimant’s brand popularity. If the domain name was found to be chosen in bad faith, then the claimant will get the domain name. If not, the person who originally bought the domain name will retain possession of it.

If one of the parties is not satisfied with the outcome of the arbitration process, they can then take the findings to a regular courtroom. One real-life example of this is Robert DeNiro, who tried to claim rights to any and all domain names that contain the phrase “tribeca.” Specifically, someone claimed tribeca.net, and DeNiro wants to have that domain name for himself.

To summarize, domain name arbitration is a good first step that avoids using the court system and may very well solve the dispute to both parties’ satisfaction. Afterwards, if one of the sides feels cheated or that the arbitration was unfair, they have the option of pursuing the case in court. Usually, however, the UDRP panel’s decisions are found to be fair by both parties, and are definitely cheaper than making a court case.

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