Someone already has your name
A squatter holding your domain. A company incorporated under your trading name. An application to register your brand as a trademark in a market you were about to enter. Each has its own procedure, its own deadline, its own cost and its own realistic odds. In more cases than anyone selling these services will tell you, the cheapest move is not to fight at all.
These are four separate systems that do not talk to each other. Winning in one gives you nothing in the others. Before spending anything, be clear whether your complaint is about a domain, a registered company name, a pending trademark application, or someone trading under your name, because the answer decides everything that follows.
A domain someone else registered
For most generic domains the route is a complaint under ICANN's Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy. Someone registered my domain explains the test: you must prove that the domain is identical or confusingly similar to your mark, that the holder has no legitimate interest, and that it was both registered and used in bad faith. That last element defeats most complaints against names registered before your business existed. The page covers WIPO's fees, the risk of a reverse domain name hijacking finding, and why the faster URS procedure suspends a domain rather than giving it to you.
A UDRP complaint, step by step follows a case from filing to transfer: the registrar lock, the 20-day response, the 14-day decision, and the ten business days in which the holder can stop the transfer by filing a lawsuit.
A company registered under your name
In the UK there is a cheap, specialised route: the Company Names Tribunal, covered in someone incorporated a company using my name. You need to show goodwill or reputation in the name, and the tribunal can order the other company to change its name. It cannot award damages, and it cannot stop the other business using the name as a brand. Elsewhere, registries have their own correction powers, such as Ireland's six-month direction and Singapore's twelve-month complaint window. These are covered on the company-name pages for each country.
A trademark application for your brand
Every application is published for a fixed period in which anyone can oppose it. Opposition windows sets out the periods: two months in the UK, extendable to three, three months at the EUIPO, and thirty days in the US, extendable on request. It also explains what happens once a window has closed. Opposition is the cheapest moment in a mark's life to stop it. If you rely on earlier use rather than a registration, read rights without registration first.
Before you fight anything
When buying the name beats winning it does the arithmetic nobody does before instructing someone. It compares the full cost of a dispute, including legal fees and the chance of losing, with the price of simply buying the name. It also covers how to buy without revealing how much you want it.
Two things that are true of all of them
None of these procedures awards you money. A domain complaint transfers or cancels a registration. A company names application orders a change of name. An opposition stops a registration. If you want damages, you are in court, which is a different order of cost and a different decision.
Delay costs you. Opposition windows close absolutely, and registry correction powers expire. Elsewhere, sitting on a problem while the other party builds a business under the name makes their position stronger and yours weaker, because several of these tests turn on whether they have a legitimate interest by the time you complain.
All dispute pages
- Someone registered my domainThe UDRP three-part test, what it costs, and the word in element three that sinks most complaints
- A UDRP complaint, step by stepEvery deadline from filing to transfer, and the ten-day window for a court action
- Someone incorporated a company using my nameA £400 UK procedure almost nobody knows exists, and what it can and cannot order
- Someone is applying to register my brandTwo months in the UK, three in the EU, thirty days in the US, and what happens once you miss it
- When buying the name beats winning itThe arithmetic nobody does before instructing someone, including the cost of losing
First published 2026-09-27. Rewritten 2026-10-18 to introduce every page in this section. General guidance on how these procedures work, not advice on your dispute. Fees and rules change, so confirm every figure at source before relying on it.