Summary

  • JPNIC's 25th-anniversary symposium material (published 2026-01-23) puts the cumulative JIPAC JP-DRP record at 195 transfer orders, 20 cancellations and 12 denials (JPNIC symposium material). Across 227 decided cases that is roughly 95% complainant success on the merits.
  • JP-DRP remedies are deliberately narrow: under Article 4(i) a panel may order only cancellation of the registration or transfer to the complainant — no damages, no injunctions (policy text; archived policy PDF copy).
  • Annual tallies for 2021–2026 confirm the same shape year by year: transfer dominates, cancellation is rare, denial is rarer (JPNIC case register).
  • An ordered remedy is not always the end of the matter. The two VENOSAN cancellations of 2021 were implemented only in June 2023, after the registrant sued (2021 case list).
  • A majority of JP-DRP complainants are non-Japanese, and the system has decided at least three cases in English when the registrant did not object (JPNIC symposium material).
  • Counting the record is harder than it looks: JPNIC and the Japan Federation of Bar Associations use different bases, and their 2024 figures do not agree (JPNIC 2024 list; JFBA statistics).

The JP-DRP (JP Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy) is the .jp equivalent of the UDRP: a fast, administrative alternative to litigation, administered by the Japan Intellectual Property Arbitration Center (JIPAC) under policy issued by JPNIC, with Japan Registry Services (JPRS) as the registry that implements the outcomes. Since the .jp dispute system turns 25 this year, its own published record offers the best available test of what the remedy path actually delivers — and where its limits lie.

The cumulative record

The most compact published account of JIPAC's outcomes appears in the material for JPNIC's 2026-01-23 symposium marking 25 years of the JP-DRP. It tallies cumulative JIPAC results as 195 transfers (移転), 20 cancellations (取消) and 12 denials (棄却) (symposium material). Across 227 decided cases, that means a complainant prevailed — by transfer or cancellation — in roughly 95% of decided cases, and a respondent wholly prevailed in about 5%. The same slide compares other institutions (ADNDRC Hong Kong 1672/8/80; FORUM 36406/89/3362; WIPO 57585/963/5254) and characterises each as roughly 90% transfer. The slide states no as-of date for the JIPAC figures, which is itself worth noting: the cumulative number is best read as "decisions rendered from 2000 to roughly the end of 2025."

The remedy set explains why the split is so lopsided. JP-DRP Article 4(i) gives a panel exactly two remedies: cancellation of the registrant's registration, or transfer of it to the complainant (policy text; archived policy PDF copy). There is no monetary relief, no declaratory ruling, and no middle outcome. A panel that finds bad-faith registration and no legitimate interest has, in practice, one useful order to make.

What the annual register shows

JPNIC publishes a consolidated register of every JP-DRP filing with its case number, outcome and — critically — the date JPRS implemented the result (register). The recent years show the same structural pattern repeated:

  • 2025: 14 transfers, 1 denial, 2 withdrawals across 17 dispositioned cases; no cancellations. The single denial was JIPAC JP2025-0014 (MARKED.JP) (2025 list).
  • 2024: 22 transfers, 1 withdrawal, 1 settlement-terminated case across 24 dispositions; no cancellation or denial. The year includes the DOCOMO cluster (JP2024-0003–0008), in which a single brand owner filed against multiple related names on the same day (2024 list).
  • 2023: 13 transfers, 2 withdrawals across 15 dispositions — both withdrawals from the same DOCOMO cluster filed 2023-12-08 (2023 list).
  • 2022: 12 transfers, 1 cancellation (ROYALCANLN.JP, implemented 2022-10-21), 1 settlement-terminated case (2022 list).
  • 2021: an unusual cluster of three cancellations (VANCLEEFARPELS-OUTLET.JP, VENOSAN.CO.JP, VENOSANSHOP.JP) among 15 allocated case numbers (2021 list).
  • 2026 (in progress): 14 allocated numbers so far, six transfers implemented, one cancellation (HAKONE-CHAN.JP, implemented 2026-07-27), one settlement-terminated case (LIMISTA.JP), six pending (2026 list).

Two details in the register deserve more attention than they usually get. First, single filings can cover multiple domain names — the DOCOMO clusters and a pending 2026 filing covering six .jp names show that the "case" is a procedural unit, not a one-domain unit, which means per-case counts understate the number of registrations affected. Second, the register's implementation column is the only public place where the remedy path becomes concrete: JPRS records, per case, when the ordered transfer or cancellation was carried out.

When the registry order is not the end

The 2021 VENOSAN cases are the clearest published illustration that an ordered remedy can be delayed, not just delivered. The register shows both VENOSAN.CO.JP and VENOSANSHOP.JP ordered cancelled in 2021, but implemented only in June 2023, with the notation that the result followed court proceedings (出(出訴後、訴訟手続を経て) (2021 list). In other words, the registrant sued, and the practical remedy arrived roughly two years later than the administrative timetable contemplated. The 25th-anniversary symposium treated court challenge as a topic in its own right — a telling sign that the practitioner community sees litigation-delayed implementation as a distinct, recognised category rather than an anomaly (JPNIC newsletter).

Who files, and in what language

JPNIC's symposium material states that a majority of JP-DRP complainants are non-Japanese, and that the same panel has conducted proceedings in English in three cases where the registrant did not object (symposium material). Combined with the brand-heavy case lists (PALANTIR.JP, UNIQLOJAPAN.JP, VICTORIASSECRET.JP and GALBANI.JP appear in recent years), the record suggests the .jp system functions substantially as a foreign brand-owner's enforcement tool for the Japanese market — a design question for a national registry that is not often discussed publicly.

Counting is contested

Any empirical claim about the JP-DRP must contend with inconsistent counting. The Japan Federation of Bar Associations' attorney statistics tabulate JP-DRP filings on a calendar-year, proceedings-started basis; JPNIC's tallies group by case-number year and count dispositions. For 2024 the two do not agree: JPNIC records 24 dispositions, while the JFBA table shows 25 filings with 18 transfers, 2 withdrawals, 4 deemed-withdrawn and 1 pending at year-end (JPNIC 2024 list; JFBA 2025 edition). The JFBA's later editions even reclassify individual cases — its 2022 and 2023 editions give different 2021 transfer counts for the same year (JFBA 2022 edition). None of this undermines the directional finding — transfer dominance is consistent across every source — but it means precise ratios should always carry their counting basis.

The design reading

Read together, the record describes a remedy path that is working exactly as its designers specified, and its specification is narrow. It converts clear bad-faith registrations into transfers quickly and near-uniformly; it reserves cancellation for the small residue where transfer is unavailable or undesired; it almost never denies a well-founded complaint; and it leaves everything a panel cannot order — damages, injunctions, good-faith disputes — to the courts, where respondents retain full rights and occasionally exercise them. That is a deliberate design choice, and the 25-year record is the evidence for what it costs and what it buys: speed and predictability for complainants, full court rights preserved for respondents, and a registry (JPRS) whose role stays ministerial — implementing recorded outcomes on recorded dates rather than adjudicating anything itself. Two further baselines close the source set: the JTA bulletin that reproduced the early JP-DRP policy text (JTA bulletin) and the JFBA's 2023 statistical edition, used here for cross-year comparison of the 2021 figures (JFBA 2023 edition).