‘Bad faith’ and ‘rights or legitimate interests’ under domain name law — emerging themes from the UDRP and auDRP

The Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy ('UDRP') establishes the international framework for the resolution of domain name disputes in the generic top level domains ('gTLDs') "” such as .com, .net, .org. National authorities are responsible for dispute resolution of country code top-level domains ('ccTLDs') "” such as .au. In Australia, the relevant local authority for the administration of ccTLDs is .au Domain Administration Ltd ('auDA'), and the relevant local policy governing .au domain name disputes is the .au Dispute Resolution Policy ('auDRP'). The auDRP is an adaptation of the international UDRP. The purpose of both the UDRP and the auDRP is to provide an alternative to litigation for the quicker and cheaper resolution of domain name disputes, and to date both policies have proven to be an effective dispute resolution mechanism. While the auDRP is based on the UDRP, there are some significant differences between the policies. The UDRP system has attracted significant comment by various scholars "” despite its fairly brief history. By contrast, there has been very little discourse on the auDRP and Australian domain name law to date "” although it has been in force for almost as long as the UDRP.