Drafting a complaint under the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP) may seem like a simple process — but it’s not. And failing to understand the substantive requirements of the UDRP’s three-part test along with the required burden of proof that must be met by appropriate evidence and relevant legal arguments, can easily cost a trademark owner both time and money.
Two recent UDRP decisions make this important lesson incredibly clear. I discuss both of these cases in a video on the GigaLaw YouTube channel.
The cases, which were decided only about two weeks apart, are very similar even though they were filed at different UDRP service providers by different trademark owners and in only one case was a complainant represented by an attorney.
In one of the cases, involving the domain name <usaquickprint.com> at the Forum, the panel referred to “poorly prepared submissions” that were “so sparse as to be largely unintelligible.”
And in the other case, involving the domain name <perfume-oils.com> at WIPO, the panel said that the complainant “failed to offer arguments or evidence to support any of its contentions.”
In both cases, the panels denied the complaints, allowing the current registrants of the domain names to keep them.
Together, these two cases provide an important warning to both trademark owners and domain name registrants in UDRP cases: Don’t take the domain name dispute process for granted. As I often tell my clients, a UDRP complaint is similar to a motion for summary judgment under U.S. law, meaning that it should contain all of the relevant factual and legal arguments, supported by evidence and citation to appropriate authority, such as previous UDRP decisions and the WIPO Overview. Failing to do so is a losing proposition.
