Bad-Faith & UDRP Doctrine
Before domain names could be bought, sold, litigated, or defended, the internet had a more basic problem: no one agreed on what a domain name actually was.
Was it property or just a contract? Speech or commerce? Use or merely possession? And when someone registered a name and did nothing at all, was that harmless inertia or actionable bad faith?
These early cases didn’t just resolve disputes. They defined the vocabulary courts, arbitrators, and registrars still use today. They drew the first lines around bad faith, legitimate interest, passive holding, and online use, often by analogy and experimentation rather than settled doctrine.
Everything that followed, from UDRP enforcement to modern domain investing, rests on the answers forged here.
