URS Time Line

Yesterday I posted on the URS and argued that the format of the complaint should be amended to require a standard form or a significantly reduced word-count limit from the current limit of 5,000 words to 1,000 words. Today, I am going to work through the IRT draft of the URS and the most-recently proposed draft from the DAG volume four to see what sort of time line we might see when the URS goes live.

A number of trademark holders and representatives of trademark holders’ interests contended in the Public Comments to the most-recent DAG that the URS, as proposed in the DAG, is no longer rapid, as it was intended to be. Frederick Felman of MarkMonitor wrote, “[a]s it is currently prescribed, and as analyzed by at least one expert dispute resolution service provider, the URS will be roughly equivalent to the UDRP with respect to time required to adjudicate and therefore is not ‘rapid.’” Nick Wood of Cum Laude asserted that the IRT’s proposal could be completed in 21 days and the DAG proposal could take “up to 47 days,” concluding “an eUDRP can take 35 days – 12 days quicker. URS is no longer rapid.” Eric Wilber, Director of WIPO Arbitration and Mediation Center, contended, among many other concerns, that the time lines for the DAG proposal were “significant.”

According to the URS proposed in the IRT’s final draft, the URS provider has one day to forward the complaint to the relevant registry, the registry has one day to freeze the contact details related to the disputed domain name, and one day from the freeze, the registry notifies the registrant and the registrar of the filing of the complaint. The registrant then has 14 days to answer the complaint. Once the registrant submits an answer or the 14-day answer period expires, a decision is rendered by the URS-provider decision maker. All told, the IRT’s proposed process should not exceed 17 days, although the IRT did not delineate the time necessary for the URS provider to administratively review the complaint for compliance with the policy and rules before the URS provider forwards the compliant complaint to the relevant registry. The IRT’s final draft also does not indicate how much time the decision maker should have to review the filings and issue a decision.

According to the URS proposed in volume four of the DAG, the URS provider has three days to review the complaint for any administrative deficiencies and one day to forward the complaint to the registry. Just as with the IRT final draft, the registry is permitted one day to lock the domain name and one day from the locking of the domain name to forward the complaint to the registrant and the registrar. Under the most-recent DAG, the registrant has 20 days to respond to the complaint. Once a response is submitted or the response period concludes, the decision must be rendered by the decision maker within three days. Therefore, the number of days required to prosecute a complaint under the URS pursuant to the proposal of volume four of the DAG is 29 days.

The time line under the DAG is 12 days longer than the IRT’s URS proposal, but the 29 days include three days for the URS provider to review the complaint for administrative compliance prior to forwarding the complaint to the registry. The most-recent DAG proposal also delineates three days for the decision maker to render its decision. It would appear that the URS provider and the decision maker should be permitted time to administratively review the complaint and to review the filings and render a decision, respectively, and nobody appears to be arguing that three days is too long. So, if we add three days for the URS provider to review the initial complaint and three days for the decision maker to review the filings and render a decision to the IRT’s 17-day proposal, the URS should be limited to 23 days. Therefore, the primary difference between the time line of the IRT proposal and the time line of the DAG proposal is the six additional days allowed for the registrant of the domain name to respond to the complaint.

If the URS proposed by the IRT had outlined the number of days for administrative review and the rendering of the decision, the IRT proposal would have submitted a procedure that should take 23 days, or six days fewer than that proposed in the latest version of the DAG, which does not appear particularly significant. The majority of the concerns for trademark holders are not with the URS time line, but with issues related to the appeal process. I will discuss those issues in the upcoming days in a separate post, because those are significant.