ICANN's 1999 policy still decides who keeps a disputed domain

The workload

Every domain registered under a generic top-level domain such as .com is bound, through the registrar's own agreement, to ICANN's Uniform Domain-Name Dispute-Resolution Policy (UDRP), approved by ICANN on 24 October 1999. For a solo founder, the relevant workload is usually defensive: responding to a UDRP complaint filed by a trademark holder who believes the founder's domain infringes their mark. The policy's own Rules for Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy, in effect for complaints filed on or after 31 July 2015, set the procedure: a complaint is filed with an ICANN-approved provider, the registrant, called the Respondent, answers, and a Panel of one or three panelists decides the case on the papers, without discovery or hearings.

What the documents show

The policy's own text states, verified, that a complainant must prove three elements: the domain is identical or confusingly similar to a trademark or service mark in which the complainant has rights; the registrant has no rights or legitimate interests in the domain name; and the domain was registered and is being used in bad faith. All three, not one, must be shown. The remedy is narrow: Paragraph 4(i) limits a Panel to requiring cancellation or transfer of the domain name registration. The policy authorizes no damages, no injunction beyond the domain, and no attorney's fees, pushing any money claim into ordinary court litigation instead.

The operating cost

The UDRP text itself sets no filing fee; that is set separately by each approved provider, documented for the largest one, WIPO, in a companion entry in this batch. The cost the policy does state falls on the registrant's side of a lost case: forfeiting the domain, plus whatever time and optional legal fees were spent contesting the complaint, since the policy provides no fee-shifting even for a respondent who wins.

The stop condition

Paragraph 9 states ICANN can modify the policy, with 30 days' posted notice, but the version in effect when a complaint was invoked applies until the dispute is over. For a registrant, the practical stop condition is the panel's decision: the registrar implements a transfer or cancellation order ten business days after being informed of it, unless the registrant files a lawsuit challenging the outcome in that window. The text names no broader point at which a registrant is safe from a future complaint; ordinary use consistent with the three elements above is the only durable defense it describes.

• Does the disputed domain use a name that predates the complainant's trademark rights, defeating the bad-faith-registration element?
• Is there a documented legitimate use of the domain, a genuine offering of goods or services, noncommercial fair use, or a common name, answering the no-legitimate-interest element?
• Has the ten-business-day implementation window been checked against the option to sue instead of accepting the panel's decision?

ICANN's text is short, procedural, and has not been substantively rewritten since 1999; a founder registering or defending a domain is bound by exactly the three-element test and the two-remedy limit the policy states, not by what a specific past dispute's outcome might suggest about how panels rule.