usTLD Dispute Resolution Policy. The usDRP combines the globally accepted Uniform Dispute Resolution Policy (“UDRP”) for the gTLDs with improvements developed in conjunction with the World Intellectual Property Organization (“WIPO”) for the administration of domain name disputes in the .BIZ top-level domain. Through its ongoing relationship with WIPO in its development of the .BIZ dispute resolution services, NeuStar is uniquely qualified to apply its knowledge and expertise in the development of domain name dispute resolution policies for the usTLD. Although an applicant for the usTLD administrator might simply adopt the UDRP as in its current form, NeuStar believes that this would be unwise given the number of flaws that two years of experience with the policy has demonstrated. The UDRP was adopted in late-1999 by ICANN as its first, and to date, its only global consensus-based policy, in response to the WIPO’s recommendation to establish a uniform dispute resolution policy for “cases of bad faith, abusive registration of domain names that violate trademark rights (‘cybersquatting’ in popular terminology).” The Management of Internet Names and Addresses: Intellectual Property Issues, Final Report of the WIPO Internet Domain Name Process, See xxxx://xxxx0.xxxx.xxx/process1/report/finalreport.html. Through its numerous consultations with WIPO during the formulation of the .BIZ dispute resolution policies, NeuStar uncovered several flaws in the UDRP process that not only led to the issuance of inconsistent determinations by panelists but also unnecessary administrative burdens on the UDRP dispute providers. For example, the current UDRP requires that a trademark owner demonstrate that a domain name registrant both registered and used the domain name in bad faith. This requirement of both “registration and use” of domain names in bad faith has led UDRP panelists to find in favor of cybersquatters who have warehoused domain names that are identical or confusingly similar to famous trademarks, but have not “used” the domain names in bad faith (i.e., the domain names do not resolve to actual web pages). In other words, panelists have found that although a trademark owner has demonstrated that a cybersquatter has registered a number of domain names that correspond to famous trademarks, because the domain name in question did not actually resolve to a web site, there was no “use” in bad faith. This result was clearly not intended by the original drafters of the UDRP. In order to address this pro...
