How does the law apply internationally?

[tigga]

Hiyall - I am doing an assignment on domain name/trademark law for my MBA and while I have a pretty good grip on things, there are some large holes in my knowledge, so if you could help me out I would really appreciate it.

Say a case has gone to arbitration at WIPO or similar and a decision reached. The Complainant is from, say, Russia and the Defendant from Spain (both non-US countries). The party that was ruled against in arbitration wants to escalate the proceedings - where do they take legal action - in the US? Russia? Spain?

I am only guessing that it is the US as ICANN is a Californian entity. Are there cases where TLDs (not ccTLDs) have been legitimately and legally tried elsewhere?

If you have links that would be great.

Thankyou very much

Matt

[jberryhill]

Read the UDRP. You will note that one of the requirements of the complaint is for the complainant to specify a jurisdiction in which the respondent may bring a suit in the event the respondent is ruled against. It is written right into the policy, you can't miss it. The complainant chooses a challenge jurisdiction of either the location of the registrar or the location of the respondent. The location of ICANN is totally irrelevant, since ICANN does not administer UDRP proceedings and is not functionally involved in domain name registrations.

You might also find this to be worthwhile reading:
http://pacer.ca4.uscourts.gov/opinion.pdf/021396.P.pdf

If, on the other hand, the complainant is unhappy with the UDRP outcome, they may bring suit wherever they want to, so long as they can satisfy the normal jurisdictional requirements of the forum. e.g. http://www.strick.com/kauffman.htm