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ADORAIntellectual Property

What is the UDRP?

The Uniform Domain-Name Dispute-Resolution Policy is a set of rules that lets a trademark owner take a domain name away from whoever registered it, without going to court. ICANN adopted it in 1999. Every person who registers a .com agrees to it in the registration agreement, whether they read it or not.

That agreement is the whole mechanism. A panel has no power over the registrant personally and cannot award damages. What it can do is order the registrar to move the domain, and the registrar is contractually bound to comply.

Which domains it covers

The UDRP applies to all generic top-level domains: .com, .net, .org, .info, .biz, and every new gTLD from .app to .xyz. It also applies to a number of country-code domains whose registries have adopted it voluntarily.

Many country-code domains have their own separate policy instead. .eu disputes run under the .EU ADR Rules rather than the UDRP. .uk has Nominet's DRS. The three elements you have to prove differ between these systems, so the first question in any domain dispute is which policy applies.

What you have to prove

A complaint succeeds only if the panel is satisfied on all three of these:

  1. The domain name is identical or confusingly similar to a trademark in which you have rights.
  2. The registrant has no rights or legitimate interests in the domain name.
  3. The domain name was registered and is being used in bad faith.

All three. Failing any one of them ends the complaint. The third is written in the conjunctive, which matters more than it looks: a domain registered innocently and later used badly usually falls outside the UDRP entirely.

The three elements in detail covers what panels actually accept as evidence for each.

What the UDRP cannot do

It cannot award you money, costs or damages. It cannot stop the registrant from using your brand elsewhere. It cannot resolve a genuine commercial dispute between two parties who both have some claim to a name.

It is also not a general remedy against anyone who registered a domain you want. If the other side runs a real business under that name, or registered before your trademark rights existed, a complaint will fail.

Who decides

Disputes are administered by approved providers. The WIPO Arbitration and Mediation Center handles the largest share and has published its decisions since 1999, which is why its case law is what practitioners cite. A case is decided by one panelist, or by three if either side asks for and pays for a three-member panel.

Panels decide on the documents. There is no hearing, no cross-examination and no oral argument. The complaint you file is very close to the entire case you will ever get to make, which is the main reason drafting matters.

Whether it is the right route for you

The UDRP is fast and cheap next to litigation. A decision usually arrives about two months after filing and the WIPO fee starts at $1,500.

It is the right route when someone has taken a domain matching your brand, has no business reason to hold it, and is parking it, reselling it, redirecting it to a competitor or using it to send mail that looks like it comes from you.

Complaints do fail. In SpringsteenD2000-1532 WIPO decision, 2001, the domain was identical to the complainant's unregistered mark and the complaint was still refused, because the registrant showed a legitimate interest and bad faith was not made out.

It is the wrong route when the facts are messy: a former distributor, a co-founder who registered the domain, a genuine competitor with its own rights, or a critic running a gripe site. Those cases either fail or belong in court.

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