In Fights Over .Com Names, Trademark Owners Usually Win
Researchers analyzing an arbitration system set up to resolve disputes over Internet addresses have found that decisions made through the system have substantially broadened the rights of trademark holders in cyberspace.

The study represents one of the first attempts to examine the circumstances and outcome of more than 3,800 disputes handled by online arbitration procedures established in 1999 by the private corporation that manages the Internet's address system.

The goal of the arbitration system, known as the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy, was to provide an efficient, low-cost alternative to litigation for trademark holders who were trying to obtain the .com equivalent of their trademarks — in many cases, from speculators hoping to sell those names at a profit to deep-pocketed corporations.

Although the researchers concluded that the system had been effective in combating these so-called abusive domain-name registrations, they also found that the system had "tipped the scales too far" in favor of trademark interests.

Milton Mueller, an associate professor at Syracuse University who conducted the study, said that in about 80 percent of the disputes examined, the party that filed the complaint, generally a trademark holder, prevailed. In more than half the cases, the party asked to defend a domain name registration did not bother to respond to the complaint and therefore lost the right to the name.

"That raises procedural and equity questions about the process," he said. "If lots of domain holders feel intimidated or feel it's too expensive to respond, the whole process becomes simply a way for trademark holders to grab domain names."
In http://www.nytimes.com/2002/06/24/technology/24MARK.html