The Bowman Gilfillan law firm is drafting a .za dispute resolution regulation (ZADRR) for domains in the .za domain space, in a bid to curb cyber squatting.
The Department of Communications appointed Bowman Gilfillan to assist in drafting the ZADRR, and the firm has been working on it for the past six to eight months.
"There is a need for a ZADRR as domain name cyber squatting and hijacking is prevalent in SA," says Neil Dundas, a director of Bowman Gilfillan.
"In our experience there are very few South African companies that have not been affected in some way or another by domain name hijacking, cyber squatting or possibly domain name mal-administration.
"Cyber squatting can be defined as the bad faith registration of an Internet domain name, normally with the view of gaining an unfair advantage or to disadvantage someone else," he adds.
Existing laws such as the Trademark Act have been used in the past. "But these laws are falling short in addressing the issues raised by cyber squatting and domain name hijacking," says Dundas.
"It is also expensive and time-consuming to follow the trademark infringement as it requires litigation in court, while jurisdictional issues can impede the process as the Internet is borderless, potentially resulting in opposing parties being in different countries."
In order to address these inadequacies, a practical and workable mechanism is required to effectively deal with domain name disputes in the .za name space, he adds.
"The ZADRR has been developed with the layman in mind and legal representation will not be a prerequisite. Substantial portions of the dispute resolution process can be administered over the Internet and the entire process could take less than 55 days," says Dundas.
However, it won`t be a free process and Dundas says at the time of lodging the complaint, the complainant will have to pay around R10 000 for a single adjudicator and R24 000 for a panel of three.
It is hoped a final version of the regulation will be finalised within the next two to three months and the regulations will be in force before the end of the year, he adds.
The ZADRR draft is a work in progress and is open for public comment. It can be downloaded from the Bowman Gilfillan Web site.
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