Category Archive

Ask First, File Later: A Model Procedure for Supplemental Filings After the Response was filed, the Complainant did not simply send in an unsolicited reply. It asked for an opportunity to file one. The Panel then issued a Procedural Order granting the request on defined terms, with the Complainant’s filing capped at 5,000 words. The Respondent was given a fixed …

Plan B Without a Penalty: The Rocca.com Panel Divides on RDNH The merits of this case were never close. A man named Rocca, using <rocca.com> for his family’s email since 2001, seven years before the Complainant’s earliest ROCCA registration, is about as far from a cybersquatter as the Policy contemplates, and the Panel was unanimous in denying the Complaint. The …

When the Resort Moves in Next Door: Is Selling Your Lot to the Obvious Buyer Bad Faith?  This case produced three opinions from three panelists, and the one that got the law right was the concurrence. The Respondent coined the word “quobly” and registered <quobly.com> in March 2014. He built a small inspirational quotes website on it, with AdWords traffic …

Standing at the Threshold: Should Complaints Built on Later Trademarks Fail at the First Element? The Complaint was denied unanimously and Reverse Domain Name Hijacking was declared unanimously. The Domain Name was registered in 1996. The Complainant’s only registered trademark was filed in September 2025. On any view of the Policy, the Complainant could not succeed. What makes this decision …

A Dissent That Never Asks the Targeting Question The majority opinion is a disciplined application of settled principles and requires little elaboration. That is the Policy working as designed. The dissent is another matter, and it warrants careful attention precisely because the approach it embodies surfaces from time to time and must be answered each time it does. Nowhere in the …

A Default Is Not a Verdict: Panel Research Done Right Default cases are where the Policy’s discipline is particularly important, because there is no respondent to point out what a complaint fails to prove. This decision shows a Panel proceeding with conspicuous care in exactly that situation, and the result is a model of how an undefended complaint against a …

Three-Letter Domain Value Cannot Overcome Direct Evidence of Targeting The Respondent relied on a principle familiar from numerous UDRP decisions: A short three-letter domain name may have substantial inherent value independent of any particular trademark, and acquiring such a domain for that inherent value can constitute a bona fide registration. The difficulty for the Respondent was not the validity of …

Complainant Pays More for UDRP than for Purchase, Gets RDNH Instead Interestingly, it appears that the Complainant requested permission to file a supplementary before actually filing the supplementary filing. This is indeed the way it should be done though it rare for complainants to take this approach. Indeed, this was one of the issues identified in the WIPO-ICA UDRP Review …

 View recording here Cultural Heritage & Mythology in Domain Name Disputes: Legitimate Interests, Bad Faith, and Targeting by Bart Van Besien  What happens when a domain name is identical to a trademark, but the same word is also the name of a mythological figure or otherwise forms part of cultural heritage? Both trademarks and domain names frequently draw on names …

Perfume Company Tries to Take P&G’s Domains Through the UDRP; Gets RDNH Instead This is a well-reasoned decision that reaches the right result, and the RDNH finding in particular is a model of how the analysis should be done, grounded squarely in what the Complaint itself disclosed. Our one substantive observation concerns the element the Panel chose not to decide. …