If someone has registered a domain name that you believe should be yours, there are several ways to recover it.

One option is to file a judicial claim seeking to obtain a court order or a favourable resolution. However, going to court is generally very slow and expensive and often does not fully satisfy your demands.

In order to overcome the problems of traditional court proceedings, dispute resolution policies have been designed. Specifically, all registrars for the .aero, .biz, .com, .coop, .info, .museum, .name, .net, and .org top-level domains follow ICANN’s Uniform Domain-Name Dispute-Resolution Policy (UDRP) (http:// www.icann.org/udrp). Under this procedure, if you want to recover a domain name that you believe should be yours, three things have to be proven:

1. That the domain name is identical or confusingly similar to a trademark or service mark to which you have rights; and
2. That the person who owns the domain name now has no rights or legitimate interests in respect of the domain name; and
3. That the domain name has been registered and is being used in bad faith.

The decision of transferring the domain name to you relies on the administrative panel appointed by the dispute-resolution service provider approved by ICANN (http://www.icann.org/dndr/udrp/ approved-providers.htm), also known as the Panel. The Panel is formed by one or three Panellists which will only grant you a favourable decision if all three above stated elements are proven. ICANN’s costs for a dispute resolution action for one domain name with a single panellist would be of around $1,500.

In the UK all “.uk” domain names are administered by Nominet (www.nic.uk) who also operate their own dispute resolution service. Complainants can refer their case for a decision by an independent expert on payment of a fee of £750 (plus VAT). This decision can be further appealed and would be heard by a panel of three selected by Nominet. The fee for such appeals is £3000 (plus VAT).