As the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) said in a recent webinar, a subsidy has reduced the starting filing fee for .eu domain name disputes to as little as 100 euros (about US $112). This represents a tremendous reduction from the standard filing fee of 1,300 euros (almost US $1,500).

This was just one of several important notes about the .eu dispute policy from the WIPO webinar.

The subsidy went into effect on October 1, 2019, and applies to all .eu disputes filed at WIPO through the end of 2020.

The subsidy is provided by EURid, the registry manager for the .eu country-code top-level domain (ccTLD), and it applies to disputes filed at either WIPO or the Czech Arbitration Court (CAC). Although CAC has been providing services for .eu disputes since 2006, WIPO began offering similar services about three years ago. (See my June 2017 blog post, “WIPO Now Accepting .eu Domain Name Disputes.”)

Since becoming a provider of .eu disputes, WIPO said in its webinar that it has administered 73 .eu cases, 82 percent of which have been decided in favor of trademark owners and 14 percent of which were settled. Only 4 percent of WIPO’s .eu disputes have resulted in decisions for the domain name registrants against which the complaints were filed.

Although the total number of WIPO’s .eu disputes is far lower than its caseload under the more popular Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP) — which applies to .com and all of the 1,200 or so “new” gTLDs — the outcomes are comparable for trademark owners pursuing cybersquatters.

How .eu Disputes Compare to the UDRP

The .eu dispute policy differs from the UDRP in many respects. In addition to the much lower .eu filing fee (UDRP complaints start at US $1,500 at WIPO):

The .eu dispute policy applies only to trademarks protected by national law of a European Union member state or by European Union Community law. (The UDRP includes no such geographic restriction.)
The .eu dispute policy requires a trademark owner to prove either that:
- the domain name has been registered without rights or legitimate interests; or
- the domain name should should be considered as having been registered or is being used in bad faith.

(The UDRP requires proof of all of the above factors.)

A prevailing trademark owner must provide evidence that it satisfies the general eligibility (presence) requirement for .eu domain names to have the domain name transferred. (The UDRP has no eligibility or presence requirement.)
Although, like the UDRP, the default language of a .eu dispute is the language of the applicable domain name registration agreement, (and, fortunately, WIPO provides .eu dispute services in all 24 official languages of EU countries), a trademark owner can submit a request to change the language of a .eu proceeding before filing its complaint. (Under the UDRP, such requests are typically included in, or filed after, the complaint itself.)

Despite these differences, the .eu dispute policy shares a lot in common with the UDRP, given that it is a quicker and less expensive alternative to court litigation that is conducted entirely online. In its webinar, WIPO said that .eu disputes are typically resolved in about three months (which appears to be only slightly longer than most UDRP proceedings).

For more details about .eu domain name disputes: