The Freename Forum

GoDaddy organised a webinar ‘UDRP Essentials & Mastering UDRP’ in July 2024 and has put the recordings online for everyone to watch.

The webinar, organised by GoDaddy Corporate Domains and the trademark protection service provider Silka, took place in two sessions of around 35 minutes each over two days. The first was ‘UDRP Essentials - Protect Your Brand in the Digital Age’, followed by ‘Mastering UDRP Strategy - Advanced Tips and Tactics’. The speakers were Cecilia Borgenstam and Klara Sigwardsson, co-founders of the brand protection service provider Silka, which claims to have already won over 1,000 UDRP proceedings for clients; also taking part were Lauren Tracey, Trisha Ytuarte and Justin Franklin from GoDaddy Corporate Domains. The first part of the webinar, ‘UDRP Essentials - Protect Your Brand in the Digital Age’, starts at the very beginning and asks the questions ‘What is a domain?’, ‘What is cybersquatting?’ and ‘What can you do?’. The speakers outline the options (‘Your Toolkit’) for countering cybersquatting before going on to discuss the UDRP. They present the function and requirements of the UDRP, analyse the advantages and disadvantages of the UDRP procedure compared to court proceedings and go through the process.

In the second part of the webinar, ‘Mastering UDRP Strategy - Advanced Tips and Tactics’, the speakers will first review important points from the first session before discussing tactical issues of the UDRP procedure. The key point here is the realisation that cybersquatters no longer register just a handful of domains, but often hundreds. For these cases, the webinar will use the RIVER LIGHT V, L.P. and Tory Burch proceedings (WIPO Case No. D2023-2690), in which 106 domains were involved, to show how to deal with cybersquatting efficiently. Other issues discussed include the language of the proceedings, expected rights when domains are registered by third parties immediately prior to the application for a trade mark and more.

The two short seminar recordings in English, each about 35 minutes long, provide a good introduction to the topic. They consist of two thirds lecture and one third questions and answers. The latter in particular are of interest, as the questions are based on a layman's understanding (for example, whether proceedings can be dropped if it turns out that the opponent has rights to the domain) and are therefore easy to understand. However, the answers are somewhat brief. Nonetheless, we recommend taking a look at the two webinars as an introduction to the subject matter. All you have to do is leave your e-mail address to watch them.

You can find the recordings of the webinar ‘UDRP Essentials & Mastering UDRP’ by GoDaddy at:
https://demo.gcd.com/webinar-udrp-essen ... ering-udrp