WIPO Temporarily Suspends UA-DRP Proceedings

On April 27, 2022, the Ukrainian .UA domain operator Hostmaster announced on its website that in view of the martial law currently in force in Ukraine, the WIPO Arbitration and Mediation Center temporarily suspended its domain name dispute resolution services under the .UA Domain-Name Dispute-Resolution Policy (UA-DRP) and will not accept any new .UA domain name registration requests until further notice.

This decision was taken following WIPO’s consultations with Hostmaster and based on the fact that Ukrainian registrars and parties to a dispute may have difficulties participating in arbitration proceedings during the ongoing military actions.

The UA-DRP administrative proceedings will resume once the martial law regime is lifted in Ukraine. The martial law, which was first introduced on February 24, 2022, currently remains effective until May 25, 2022.

The UA-DRP is a domain name resolution mechanism similar to the UDRP (Uniform Domain-Name Dispute-Resolution Policy). The proceedings are administered by the WIPO Arbitration and Mediation Center. For a complaint to be successful, the following must be proven:

• The complainant’s trademark is identical or confusingly similar to the domain name;
• The domain name registrant has no rights or legitimate interests in respect of the domain name in question; and
• The domain name is registered and/or used in bad faith.

The remedies available to the complainant are the domain name cancellation or its transfer to the complainant.

The UA-DRP procedure cost is equal to the UDRP procedure cost and ranges from EUR 1,315 (USD 1,500) to EUR 4,385 (USD 5,000). The UDRP procedure usually lasts 60-75 days.

Prepared by: Igor Alfiorov

For more information, please contact ukraine@petosevic.com.

Sources: WIPO website; Hostmaster website; Ukrinform news portal