Domain name disputes on the rise

Statistics released by industry groups show an increase in disputes over Web domain names -- something industry watchers attribute to the number of companies discovering the advantages of having a Web presence and the difficulty some face in finding an unused Web moniker that describes their business.

David Hicks, director of marketing and communications with Ottawa-based Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA), said more companies are conducting business over the Web after realizing it’s great for marketing and connecting with their community.

“They may come in quite late to the game and decide they want to do these things and discover that in fact the domain they want to use has been registered by someone else.”

CIRA publishes statistics of dispute resolutions for .ca domain names initiated under the Canadian Dispute Resolution Policy (CDRP), which is based on the global Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP), a process established by the global but U.S.-based Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). They show a rise in numbers in 2005 that remain constant thereafter.

Another industry group, The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) reported 2,156 domain name disputes in 2007, up from 1,857 in 2000. WIPO reported 48 cases so far in 2008.

Hicks said another cause behind the rise is that platforms like advertising sites, for instance, have become increasingly commercially-viable.

The scarcity of names, he added, is also a contributing factor, specifically around single-word domains and three-letter combinations. “As that happens, people are getting more aggressive about enforcing their trademark.”

Actually, he was surprised at one incident last year, in which Alberta premier Ed Stelmach threatened to sue a blogger alleging a domain name was registered in “bad faith.” He said it’s not uncommon to find a politician’s name already registered by a critic or campaign competitor. But, it’s odd that the name went unregistered by Stelmach for so long for someone so prominent in Alberta politics.

“From a marketing perspective nowadays, the Web is very important and that such an oversight occurred is somewhat surprising to me,” said Hicks.

There’s also a greater awareness around domain names, he said, due to the increased interest in .ca domains by the domainer community, in other words, people who speculate on domains and trade them.

The introduction of UDRP probably raised the level of awareness and influenced the spike in the CDRP's numbers observed in 2005, said Neil Melliship, partner with Vancouver-based Clark Wilson LLP and the chair of the firm’s technology and intellectual property group.

The subsequent plateau might have been due to the fact that “the .ca names are not as critical to many companies as .com,” he added.