Question: The cadidates have talked about cybersquatting. How about the reverse? Some companies who covet already registered, not infringing domains, resort to Reverse Domain Name hijacking. Some have sucessfully abused the URDP process for this. How would you propose to combat this practice?

Nominee Replies

Masanobu Katoh - posted on 2000-10-02 12:08:09 As pointed out by Mr. Chaing, the rules for the UDRP do define reverse domain name hijacking (Paragraph 1). These UDRP rules also require the Panel to declare in its decision if the complaint was brought in bad faith, which includes the concept of reverse domain name hijacking (Paragraph 15(e)). Whether this definition is enough and the implementation by panels of these rules is proper or not should be discussed as a part of the overall review of the UDRP operations in the future. Johannes Chiang - posted on 2000-10-01 09:38:51 It's a reasonable consideration that corporations and Trademark Holders may use the UDRP to reverse Domain Hijacking. You can find that, in the UDRP, there is an advantage for the Respondents to ask the Panels to claim a Reverse Domain Hijacking to the Complainants if the Complainants can not prove all terms against the Respondents sustained and Intend to Reverse Domain Hijacking. This is how UDRP does to prevent corporations and trademark holders from disputing UDRP and trying to reverse domain hijacking. supplement to my my previous answer: Because of yet a flaw in UDRP, WIPO may decide in their own discretion. That's the problem as most of UDRP. How to propose deals with the source of the ambiguity. In this context, the definition for Reverse Domain Hijacking in curent Rules for UDRP states: Reverse Domain Name Hijacking means using the Policy in bad faith to attempt to deprive a registered domain-name holder of a domain name. And, the rule is : (e) Panel decisions and dissenting opinions shall normally comply with the guidelines as to length set forth in the Provider's Supplemental Rules. Any dissenting opinion shall accompany the majority decision. If the Panel concludes that the dispute is not within the scope of Paragraph 4(a) of the Policy, it shall so state. If after considering the submissions the Panel finds that the complaint was brought in bad faith, for example in an attempt at Reverse Domain Name Hijacking or was brought primarily to harass the domain-name holder, the Panel shall declare in its decision that the complaint was brought in bad faith and constitutes an abuse of the administrative proceeding. Sureswaran Ramadass - posted on 2000-09-30 04:41:36 The UDRP issue has to be addressed case-by-case and studied properly so that such things dont occur. Also, the new TLDs should have a stricter base policy, to avoid such issued. This is a really tough problem and I think ICANN is doing the best it can.