Nominet doesn’t want your .uk disputes to go to court — Unlike UDRP

Nominet states court decision validates its dispute resolution service.

Nominet is celebrating a decision by the High Court (a senior court in England) upholding a decision reached in its Dispute Resolution Service for the domain Emirates.co.uk.

In its opinion, the court ruled:

Looking at the scheme as a whole, it was apparently intended to create a self-contained dispute resolution mechanism which is closely regulated, cheap, quick and (apparently) efficient. To add a parallel route of applying to court (which I fear would not always attract all those adjectives) would be inimical to the apparent intention of the parties.

Nominet views this as “validation” of its dispute resolution service.

Notice how this differs from what UDRP is (supposed to be): a regulated, cheap, quick and efficient way to settle surefire cybersquatting complaints. If a party wants to take a case subject to UDRP to court, most of the time the UDRP panel will just drop the case.

Of course, Nominet’s process differs from UDRP and even includes an appeal process.

I’m not giving an opinion on which model is better, but I think it’s interesting to see the difference in how these two similar programs operate.