Someone registered my startup's name on .si. Can a .si domain dispute help? (2026)

Clerion Research Team16 October 202612 min read

Yes, a .si domain dispute through Register.si's ARDS process can transfer your startup's name to you, but only if you hold a right Slovenian law recognises, such as an EU trade mark, and can show bad faith. It costs €700 including VAT and takes about two to three months, so buying the name back is often cheaper.

Blue blurred gradient banner fading to off-white, reading Your name on .si

If someone registered your startup's name as a .si domain, you have three real options: buy it, file a .si domain dispute through Register.si's ARDS process (€700 including VAT for up to five names, decided under Slovenian rules), or wait for it to lapse. As of October 2026, most of these names were bought to resell, so start by finding out what the holder wants.

This is the follow-on to our guide on things to know before you buy a .si domain. That guide is for people who got there first. This one is for the founder who typed yourname.si on a Tuesday and found a parking page with a "make an offer" button.

You're not the only one. Netcraft found that about 52% of the .si names registered through Dynadot between 19 and 22 September 2026, the window between the Truth Social poll and the UN speech, were already listed for resale by 23 September. Its examples include boeing.si. It was a land grab, and other people's brand names were part of the land.

None of this is legal advice. We make analytics, we are not a law firm, and when real money is at stake you should talk to a lawyer who has actually run a .si case.

Can a .si domain dispute get my startup's name back?

Yes, if you can prove three things: the .si name matches a right you hold that Slovenian law recognises, the holder has no legitimate interest in it, and they registered or used it in bad faith. If an arbiter agrees, the name is transferred to you or deleted. If you cannot prove all three, a dispute is €700 spent on a loss.

Those three tests come from Article 17.3 of the ARDS Rules of Procedure, the registry's own dispute system, and they mirror section 18.2.1 of the Register.si general terms. Every .si holder agrees to ARDS when they register. A squatter cannot refuse to take part.

The part most guides skip: the .com playbook does not carry over. .si disputes run under the registry's own ARDS rules, with their own arbiters, in Slovenian. File the way you would against a .com squatter and you will likely get the paperwork wrong.

How do I find out who registered my name on .si?

Run a WHOIS lookup on register.si. If the holder is a company, its name and details are published. If the holder is a private person, the registry shows only an email address, under section 13.3 of its general terms. That email is the official way to reach them.

Look at three things before you write to anyone:

What the domain shows. A for-sale page or a marketplace listing is evidence. Screenshot it with the date visible.
When it was registered. A name bought between 19 and 29 September 2026, inside the speculative window, tells a story an arbiter can read.
What else the holder owns. If the same email holds forty .si names that match other brands, that pattern matters.

Keep all of it: screenshots, WHOIS output, listing URLs, prices. You'll need that file whether you end up buying or fighting.

Should I just try to buy the .si domain back?

Often, yes. Buying is faster, it is certain, and for a name the holder parked to flip it can cost less than a dispute plus legal help. So ask before you threaten. A polite first message, sent without your company signature, is likely to get a lower opening price than a lawyer's letter.

This is the same advice the Dutch registry SIDN gives for .nl: contact the holder first, because a lot of clashes are misunderstandings, and get advice before you pay a high price.

It helps to know what the market is doing. The highest reported .si sale so far is Staffing.si at $50,000, sold on Spaceship around 9 October 2026. But staffing is a generic word that lots of buyers want. A made-up startup name is worth almost nothing to anyone but you, and that's your leverage, so say it.

Set a ceiling before you start. A sensible one is what the dispute route below would cost you, because above that number it's cheaper to fight.

What rights count in a .si domain dispute?

The rules list a Slovenian trademark, a company name in the Slovenian court register, copyright under Slovenian law, a registered geographical indication, a personal name, or another right Slovenian law recognises. An EU trade mark covers Slovenia, because it covers every EU country, so it is the safest right to lean on. A US-only trademark is not on the list.

That last line is where most founders outside the EU get caught. The ARDS text talks about rights under Slovenian law and never mentions US or UK registrations. Whether a foreign right qualifies as "other rights recognised in Slovenian law" is a question for a Slovenian lawyer, not a guess.

The cleanest fix is an EU trade mark. The EUIPO says one EU trade mark gives protection throughout the whole of the EU with one application. The basic online fee is €850 for one class, €50 for a second, and it lasts ten years.

Two things to watch. First, a trade mark you file after the squatter registered may carry less weight on bad faith, because they could not have targeted a right that did not exist yet. Your evidence of earlier use matters. Second, if your name is a dictionary word, the holder can argue a legitimate interest. "Build" is a word. "Fennick" is not.

How much does a .si domain dispute cost, and how long does it take?

The ARDS fee is €700 including VAT for one to five domain names with a single arbiter, or €1,200 for six to ten. Outside Slovenia you pay €573.77 or €983.60 without VAT under the reverse charge. A three-arbiter panel doubles it. Expect about two months from filing to transfer.

Fees are on the registry's domain disputes fees page. You pay by bank transfer to ARNES, the institution that runs .si, and attach proof of payment to the complaint. The complainant pays the fee up front (Art. 9.1).

Here is the timeline from the ARDS rules, step by step:

Step	Deadline in the rules	Rule
Registry checks your complaint is complete	5 days	Art. 11.1
You fix any gaps	5 days from notice	Art. 11.2
Domain is blocked	Same day the complaint and fee are complete	Art. 11.3
Holder responds	21 days from blocking	Art. 11.4, 12.1
Response forwarded to you	3 days	Art. 12.5
Arbiter decides	14 days from appointment, can be extended	Art. 17.5
Decision sent to both sides	3 days	Art. 18.1
Transfer or deletion carried out	Within 21 days, unless a court case is filed	Art. 18.2

Add those up and you get roughly 70 days, plus however long it takes to appoint an arbiter. So call it two to three months.

The block is the bit that really helps you. From the day your complaint is complete, the holder cannot sell, transfer or delete the name (general terms 5.5.2). They can keep using it, but they cannot flip it to someone else while you wait.

Two more facts change the cost. Proceedings run in Slovenian (Art. 4.1), and the registry can ask for a certified translation of anything filed in another language. There is no appeal inside ARDS (Art. 17.8), though either side can still go to court in Ljubljana.

Should I buy it, fight it or wait? A worked example

Say you run Fennick, a made-up AI meeting-notes tool on fennick.ai. You check on 16 October 2026 and fennick.si was registered on 24 September by an email that holds sixty other .si names. It shows a $4,000 "buy now" price.

Your options, priced:

Buy it. Open at a few hundred dollars and point out the name has no value to anyone else. Worst case, you pay the listing price.
Dispute it, if you already hold an EU trade mark. €573.77 fee, plus translation and probably a few hours of a Slovenian lawyer's time. Strong case: invented name, registered in the speculative window, listed for sale, part of a portfolio.
Dispute it with only a US trademark. Add €850 for an EU filing and accept that your right postdates their registration. Weaker on bad faith.
Wait. If they registered for one year, the name expires in September 2027. Register.si gives 30 days of quarantine after expiry, then deletes it (general terms 5.4). Then it is open again.

For Fennick, the rational moves are option 1, at any price below what option 2 would cost in fees and lawyer time, or option 2 itself if the EU mark already exists. Option 3 only makes sense if the .si name is causing real harm. Option 4 is fine if you never planned to use .si at all.

Is a squatted .si name a security risk for my users?

It can be. Netcraft points out that "s" sits next to "a" on a QWERTY keyboard, so a .si domain is a one-key typo of its .ai twin. As of 24 September 2026 it counted more than 44,000 .si and .ai pairs sharing the same name, 22% of all .si domains, though it saw only a low level of fraud on .si.

Netcraft's 1 October follow-up still saw no rise in phishing tied to the rename. So the risk today is a parked page, not a fake login. That can change if the term sticks: the 29 September executive order moves the US executive branch to "SI", and people learn to trust addresses they see often.

If your product lives on .ai, that typo is the real reason to care, and it's a better one than any SEO argument. Someone who mistypes your login URL by one key ends up on a server you don't control.

Does someone else holding my .si name hurt my visibility in AI assistants?

Not directly. ChatGPT, Perplexity and the rest cite pages that answer questions, and a parking page answers nothing. The risk is confusion: a lookalike that later gets real content, or users who type the wrong ending. Your own site staying clear and readable to crawlers matters far more.

We covered the brand-safety side in who controls the .si domain, and is it safe to build a brand on, and the money side in are .si domains a good investment. The short version: the .si name is nice to have, but your main domain is what you're really building on.

Registration is still running hot. Register.si reported 13,603 new .si names in the 24 hours before 1 October 2026, and when we checked register.si on 16 October its counter showed 415,655 .si domains in total. So if your name is still free, don't wait on it.

Do this tonight

Type yourname.si, and every product name you own, into a WHOIS lookup on register.si. Write down which are free and which are taken.
Register any that are free. It costs about $12 to $18 a year at normal-priced registrars, and five minutes.
For any that are taken, screenshot the page, the WHOIS record and any sale listing, with dates.
Check whether you hold an EU trade mark. If you do not and the name matters, price an EUIPO filing.
Send one short, unsigned enquiry to the holder's WHOIS email and set your buying ceiling before they reply.

Once your own .si name points at your main site, you will want to know whether it ever gets used, and which AI assistants are sending people your way. Clerion reports ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Gemini and Copilot as their own traffic channel, from one script tag and without cookies.

Things to know before you buy a .si domain: prices, registrars and the redirect setup.
Who controls the .si domain, and is it safe to build a brand on?: the registry, its rules and the control risk.
Are .si domains a good investment?: what the aftermarket data says so far.

Frequently asked questions

Can I get my startup's name back if someone registered it as a .si domain?

Often, yes. You can buy it from the holder, or file a complaint under Register.si's ARDS rules. ARDS transfers or deletes the name if you prove a right recognised in Slovenian law, no legitimate interest by the holder, and bad faith.

How much does a .si domain dispute cost?

The ARDS fee is €700 including VAT for one to five domains with a single arbiter, or €1,200 for six to ten. Complainants outside Slovenia pay €573.77 or €983.60 without VAT. A three-arbiter panel doubles the fee.

How long does a .si domain dispute take?

The ARDS deadlines add up to roughly 70 days, plus the time to appoint an arbiter: 21 days for the holder to respond, 14 days for the decision and up to 21 days to carry it out. Plan for two to three months.

Does a US trademark count in a .si domain dispute?

The ARDS rules list Slovenian trademarks, Slovenian company names, personal names and other rights recognised in Slovenian law. They do not mention US registrations. An EU trade mark covers Slovenia and is the safer right to rely on. Ask a Slovenian lawyer.

Is a .si domain dispute the same as a .com UDRP complaint?

No. .si disputes run under Register.si's own ARDS procedure, which every .si holder accepts when registering. It has its own arbiters and fees and runs in Slovenian, so follow the ARDS rules rather than a .com template.

Can the holder sell my .si name while the dispute runs?

No. Once your complaint is complete and the fee is paid, the registry blocks the domain the same day. A blocked .si domain cannot be transferred or deleted until the case ends, though the holder can keep using it.

What happens if a squatted .si domain is not renewed?

When a .si registration expires without renewal, it goes into quarantine for up to 30 days and is then deleted, after which anyone can register it again. Names bought for one year in September 2026 come up in September 2027.

Sources

.si domain dispute.si domainsuper intelligencedomainsbrand protectioncybersquatting