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Registrar rapped for failing to transfer UDRP domain

Kevin Murphy, August 20, 2013, 16:55:34 (UTC), Domain Registrars

The domain name registrar Gal Comm has been warned by ICANN that it risks losing its accreditation for failing to transfer a cybersquatted name to Home Depot.
The compliance notice (pdf) concerns the domain name homedpeot.com, which was lost in a UDRP filed in early March and decided on April 21.
According to ICANN, Gal Comm, which has about 30,000 gTLD domains under management, failed to transfer the domain within 10 days of finding out about the decision, as required under the policy.
Whois records compiled by DomainTools show that the domain was instead deleted at in early April, and subsequently re-registered with a different registrar, where it’s currently under dubious-looking privacy.
According to the ICANN compliance notice, Gal Comm says that it deleted the domain because it received a Whois inaccuracy complaint about it.
Assuming that’s correct (and the Whois back in March was blatantly false) we have an interesting tension between policies that seems to have caused a slip-up at the registrar.
But registrars are supposed to lock domains they manage after they become aware of UDRP actions, so allowing the domain to delete seems to be a breach of the policy.
ICANN has given Gal Comm until September 10 to produce its records relating to the domain — and pay past-due accreditation fees — or face possible de-accreditation.
It’s very rare for ICANN to send compliance notices to registrars related to UDRP implementation.

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Comments (1)

  1. John Berryhill says:
    August 20, 2013 at 5:00 pm

    “But registrars are supposed to lock domains they manage after they become aware of UDRP actions, so allowing the domain to delete seems to be a breach of the policy.”
    The UDRP Paragraph 3 states that other requirements remain applicable:
    “We may also cancel, transfer or otherwise make changes to a domain name registration in accordance with the terms of your Registration Agreement or other legal requirements.”
    Unfortunately, the UDRP does not, by its own terms, over-ride any other requirements bearing on a domain name.
    While, obviously, the administrative choice made by the registrar here was a poor one, ICANN could send them a breach notice for not following the WHOIS accuracy policy, had the registrar made the other decision, because the two policies were telling the registrar to do two different things. Clearly, it was Schroedinger’s domain name.

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