NIC Senegal, the registry responsible for administering Senegalese domain names, has decided that disputes relating to .SN domain names will be governed by the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP). To this end, the registry has designated the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) Arbitration and Mediation Center as its dispute resolution service provider (wipo.int). The .SN joins the long list of country code top-level domains (ccTLDs) whose disputes are administered by WIPO (ompi.int).
Article 10 of the Registry Rules sets a territorial restriction: “Applicants of .SN domain names having an address abroad are required either to appoint an agent established in Senegal or to provide a letter of accreditation for the service provider” (nicsenegal.sn). This territorial condition certainly helps to maintain a low level of disputes. Contrariwise, experience also shows that every time a registry lowers the eligibility criteria, a wave of cybersquatting follows.
Despite of the territorial restriction, Senegalese domain name registration statistics show constant progress.
The share of Senegalese domain names registered by foreign investors is unknown. However, it is interesting to note that foreign direct investment in Senegal has increased sharply since 2012 (worldbank.org), which more or less corresponds to the years from which the number of domain name registrations accelerated.
The correlation between the expansion in domain name registrations and the increase in foreign direct investment in Senegal is unproven. However, the two are often linked. And in any case, good practice consists in filing the trademarks and registering the corresponding domains as soon as the investor starts to operate in the host country.
