Who Really Owns Your Company's Domain Name? Limits of UDRP

Introduction

Imagine arriving at work to find that your company’s website has gone down, email unreachable and the company’s digital presence all blank. Now imagine all of these problems are not caused by a hacker or government. In fact, he is the founder of the company. This is somewhat the story behind Lazarus Enterprises Inc.

Lazarus Enterprises Inc, the AI software business headquartered in Boston in December 2025 found itself locked out of the registrar accounts controlling ‘lazarusai.com’ and ‘lazarus.enterprises’ after its founder revoked the administrative access of everyone else connected with the business. The company went to WIPO. Twice. Both times it lost. And the question of who actually owns those domain names remains, as of the date of the second decision, entirely unresolved.

Companies across jurisdictions usually follow a concept called Separate Legal Entity which requires the company to be recognised as an entity of its own distinct from its proprietors/ shareholders. Once a business is incorporated, it is standard practice for domain names used in connection with the company's operations to be registered in the company's name or validly assigned to it, ensuring that legal ownership corresponds with commercial use. This distinction assumes particular significance because domain names frequently underpin a company's website, email infrastructure, customer communications, and brand identity.

About the Dispute

Ariel Elizarov, the founder of Lazarus Enterprises, prior to the incorporation of the company, had already registered the website domain ‘lazarus.enterprises’ personally using his own money. Post incorporation in Massachusetts, USA, he went to yet again register the domain name ‘lazarusai.com’ in his own name. In 2019 it had grown into a Delaware based corporation that would itself file WIPO complaints. Elizarov remained as the CEO of the company, where he remained as the person to whom the registration of the domain lied, despite the company paying for the renewals. To anyone on the outside, those domains were corporate assets. Inside, they remained registered to Elizarov personally.

The relationship deteriorated in late 2025 for undeclared reasons. It is alleged that Elizarov retired as CEO and resigned from the board in October 2025, following which a new CEO was appointed. Elizarov contested that he remained the majority shareholder and that the board actions were invalid under the company's bylaws thus he lawfully reasserted executive authority in December 2025, and he was empowered to do exactly what he did. What is not contested is that in December 2025, Elizarov revoked everyone else's administrative access to the registrar accounts for both domains. The company filed a UDRP complaint. A first panel denied it, finding that the evidence of bad faith was insufficient and that the factual disputes required discovery that the UDRP could not provide. The company refused. A second UDRP complaint in front of a different panel was denied that too.

Where UDRP Usually Applies

The Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy was created in 1999 to address a specific and an obvious evil: actors registered in bad faith for domain names corresponding to well-known brands are done so in order to extort, misdirect the public, or ill conceive legitimate businesses. The mechanism is fast with proceedings usually concluding in under sixty days, without oral hearings, formal depositions, or cross-examination. WIPO administers a substantial body of panel decisions over two decades.

In regard to the dispute itself, the success is related to three things for a complainant to win. Firstly, that the disputed domain name is identical or deceptively similar to a trademark in which it holds rights. Secondly, that the respondent has no legitimate rights or interests in the name. Thirdly, that the name was registered and is being used in bad faith. All three elements must be made out. The procedure is well-suited to its original purpose. A cybersquatted who registered `niketrainers.com` in 1999 hoping to sell it back to Nike is precisely the kind of case WIPO panels were designed to resolve quickly and efficiently.

What WIPO panels were not designed to resolve is who owns a domain name, whether a company or its founder who filed it; and that distinction is exactly where the Lazarus case collapsed.

Why Trademark Law Was No Help

The company made a genuine trademark argument. It had been using the name 'LAZARUS' in connection with AI products since 2019, had gained industry recognition, and built its brand around these domain names. Had this been a dispute with a third-party cybersquatter, that argument might well have succeeded on the first element alone.

The second panel acknowledged the company's common law rights, but the argument was futile as the real difficulty was elsewhere. The actual questions in dispute became: did the original Technology Assignment Agreement between the founder and other shareholders in 2019 also transfer ownership of the domains from Elizarov to the company? Further questions about its legitimacy were being posed like if it were properly executed? Whether Elizarov signed it? And perhaps more fundamentally: who had true and legitimate authority to speak for the company at all, given that the parties had opposite accounts of what happened in December 2025?

These are questions of contract law, corporate governance, IP assignment, and such fiduciary obligations which require evidence, witnesses, and cross-examination. A UDRP panel isn't a suitable forum to deal with any of this matter. The second panel examined the said Agreement in question produced by the company but was not fully executed hence found that it could not determine whether it had ever been finalised. The company could not adequately explain why this agreement had not been produced during the first proceeding, despite being in their own file records. And even if accepted, an executory agreement from 2019 could not establish that Elizarov had acted in bad faith when he registered the domains in 2017 and 2018 a time when no company existed and no trademark had yet been established.

The panel also rejected the argument that Elizarov's December 2025 administrative update constituted a new "registration" capable of attracting a fresh bad faith analysis. He had always been the registrant of record. Updating access credentials is not acquiring a domain. The panel declined to accept the refiled complaint and, noting that both parties had at least colourable claims to legitimacy, declined to make a finding of Reverse Domain Name Hijacking against either side. Hence the ownership question was left open till date.

Governance Failure Turned Dispute

Reading Lazarus Corporation as a cautionary tale about early-stage companies with informal governance, paperwork left incomplete, decisions made in hallways is not wrong, but it is too shallow. The underlying failure here is structural and often common. Domains are registered by whoever builds the first website. A founder sets up the registrar account, and a technical co-founder holds the credentials. When a company grows, raises capital, appoints a board, hires a general counsel, and files its patents but they forget formally transferring the domain. The asset is used as though it belongs to the company because, for practical purposes, it does. However, in the eyes of the Law, it has shown that it may not.

This matters for any company with limited formal acknowledgement of titles. For companies seeking venture investment or preparing for an acquisition, due diligence will expose any mismatch between operational use and registered ownership of domain names. For companies with multiple founders, the departure of any one of them leaves unresolved questions about who retains control of registrar accounts and what happens to domains that were registered in that person's name. For businesses that have built significant brand equity around a domain they do not legally own in the company's name, the commercial value of that brand rests on an unresolved ownership uncertainty.

Domain names are strategic assets. They become another leverage for founders when they are hostile from the shareholder's interest hence to avoid that they deserve the same governance attention as trademarks, bank accounts, and shareholding records.

The litigation is complicated; hence companies must tediously verify and deal with due diligence. Best practise for Companies is they must periodically audit every domain and other titles associated with their business confirming the registrant of record, verifying that registrar account credentials are held institutionally rather than personally, and ensuring that access rights are linked to roles rather than individuals even if they are key part of the organisation. if domains are registered in a founder's or employee's name, a formal written assignment agreement which is executed, dated and hence transferred those registrations to the company. Founder agreements and IP assignment clauses should reference domain names expressly, not merely by implication under a general IP sweep.

Limitations of WIPO & How to Circumvent It

The panel in the second proceeding could not determine who owns those domain names. That was not a failure of the panel but an honest acknowledgment of the limits of the forum. Resolving the ownership question properly would require a court with full evidentiary powers: the ability to compel discovery, examine witnesses, assess the authenticity of contested documents, and apply the relevant principles of contract and corporate law. WIPO was not capable of such scrutiny like any other court would. However no other court would have jurisdiction to deal with the same.

What the Lazarus decision leaves behind is an uncertainty which is that the law does not offer a clean answer. Property follows registration even if equity shareholders may disagree. The contract may aid in making this blurred line clearer. WIPO could not answer this question because it was not the right forum for such a foundational question. Perhaps this question should never have reached a forum at all. It should have been dealt with at once, clearly, in writing, at the beginning via an agreement, or via a board resolution. Allowing assumptions and taking for granted attitude led to the confusion turning into a costly dispute, hence showing clarity in contract is pertinent and important for companies in every matter imaginable.

Author: Vijayvikrant Nag, in case of any queries please contact/write back to us via email to chhavi@khuranaandkhurana.com or at  Khurana & Khurana, Advocates and IP Attorney.

Endnotes

1. Lazarus Enterprises, Inc. v. Ariel Elizarov, WIPO Case No. D2025-5183 (2026), World Intellectual Property Organization Arbitration and Mediation Center.

2. Lazarus Enterprises, Inc. v. Ariel Elizarov, WIPO Case No. D2026-1237 (2026), World Intellectual Property Organization Arbitration and Mediation Center.

3. Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP) (adopted 24 October 1999), available at: https://www.icann.org/resources/pages/policy-2012-02-25-en.

4. World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), WIPO Overview of WIPO Panel Views on Selected UDRP Questions, Third Edition (WIPO Overview 3.0) (2017), available at: https://www.wipo.int/amc/en/domains/search/overview3.0/.

5. Stephen L. Carter, "The Trouble with Domain Name Ownership in Corporate Transactions," (2021) Journal of Intellectual Property Law & Practice, Vol. 16, Issue 9, pp. 941–949.

6. Patrick Van Eecke & Maarten Truyens, "Domain Names as Business Assets: Ownership, Control and Governance," (2018) Computer Law & Security Review, Vol. 34, Issue 5, pp. 1044–1055.

7. Deborah E. Bouchoux, Intellectual Property: The Law of Trademarks, Copyrights, Patents and Trade Secrets (6th edn., Cengage Learning, 2022), Chapter 5.

8. World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), Domain Name Dispute Resolution Service – Frequently Asked Questions, available at: https://www.wipo.int/amc/en/domains/faq/.