.eu Dispute Resolution rules published

The Czech Arbitration Court has been appointed as the body responsible for the resolution of disputes relating to the new .eu domain. Following a consultation in the summer of 2005, it published its dispute resolution rules. The rules appear to be based upon or are otherwise similar to the ICANN Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy.

The new dispute resolution rules include the following:

• In the first instance, decisions will be made by a single expert. However, either party to a dispute may request that a three expert panel hears any dispute.
• After a complaint is received, the responding party must respond within 30 days. The expert or expert panel will make its decision within 30 days of receiving the response.
• The default language of proceedings will be the language of the registration agreement for the disputed domain name. However, either party can request that the language of the proceedings be any of the twenty five plus official languages of the EU.
• Any decision made by the expert or the expert panel (e.g. that the domain name is to be transferred) should be implemented by EURid within 30 days.

The section of the Czech Arbitration Court responsible for hearing .eu domain name disputes was up and running from 7 December 2005, when the first applications for .eu domain names were accepted by EURid. It is yet to be seen how well the court will cope with the number of disputes it is expected to hear or, indeed, with the 25 language possibilities.

This article first appeared in our Technology Annual Review, March 2006. To view this publication, please click here to open in a new window.