December 02, 2006

.be: Plaintiffs to be refunded of ADR costs

A premiere worth mentioning! The Belgian Registry DNS BE will soon offer to pay back half the costs of the procedure to the plaintiff who wins an ADR case over a .be name.
To launch an ADR case under the .be ADR rules, complainants have to pay 1,600 € to the ADR provider. Given that the Registry commits to refund half this sum, the costs will be lowered to 800 € next year, when this policy is enforced.
Will this money come from the pocket of the respondent? Not exactly. There will be third party mechanism.
According to the press release, "DNS BE will try to recover the refunded amounts from the former domain name holder who lost the procedure".
The new terms and conditions have not been published yet. There will probably be a stipulation in the ADR rules that the Registry would refund part of the procedure costs, and a clause in the registration contract by which the person who registers is bound to pay half the procedure costs to the Registry in case it is ruled that the domain name has been registered in violation of the terms and conditions. One will see if a defendant who loses the case and the name will spontaneously pay 800 €...

1 comment:

Unknown said...

I'm pleased to hear that and I hope that the European ADR procedure will be amended in similar way. It is not fair that Complainant must pay all costs in the proceeding and the loosing party is obliged only to provide a response (for free...)
In Poland, my home country, Respondent might be obliged by Panel to pay costs of proceeding, costs incurred in presenting evidence in the proceeding, as well as reasonable costs of representation and legal assistance in the matter. However, Polish procedure is seriously flawed, due to the fact that the disputed domain is not attributed to the winning party ! It is just released for the public.