My prior post on Microsoft’s filing of lawsuits under the ACPA (”Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act”) rather than under the more common UDRP (”Uniform Dispute Resolution Policy”) raised some questions regarding the differences between the two proceedings and why one would proceed under the ACPA rather than the UDRP.

The main difference between the two is that under the ACPA, your remedies are not limited to just getting the domain name transferred to you. You can also seek money damages, like Microsoft intends to do. However, money damages are not automatically granted - you must prove damages so having a registered trademark in the domain in question will help a lot.

The other major difference is the length of time required to complete the process. The UDRP is intended to be a quick, simple process which generally gets finalized within 90 days of the filing of the complaint. The ACPA proceeding, though, is like other federal lawsuits and can take months and even years to finalize, depending on how vigorously it is contested. So, if your real aim is to get the domain as quickly as possible, UDRP is a better choice.

So, given that, why would someone choose proceeding under the ACPA versus the UDRP? (1) they want money damages which aren’t available under the UDRP and feel they have a good chance of getting them; and/or (2) they believe the current domain owner will appeal the UDRP decision if they lose and they don’t want to waste the time or step of the UDRP process. (The loser in a UDRP case has ten days to appeal the decision to transfer of cancel the domain name by filing a lawsuit).

This entry was posted on Monday, August 28th, 2006 at 2:28 pm and is filed under Domain Name Issues. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.