Step-by-step: structure escrow for a .ch domain purchase

Step-by-step: structure escrow for a .ch domain purchase. UDRP and ccTLD domain recovery and defense across .ch. Email the firm to assess your case.

A Swiss company lists its core .ch domain for sale at a price that looks right. You wire the money. Then the seller disappears, the domain transfer stalls at SWITCH, and you discover the name carried a prior dispute you never knew existed. That sequence happens more often than sellers admit. Structuring escrow correctly is the step that prevents it.

To structure escrow for a .ch domain purchase, a buyer must complete three things in the correct order: a chain-of-title and prior-dispute check against SWITCH registry records, a written transfer agreement governed by Swiss law, and a neutral escrow arrangement that holds funds until SWITCH confirms the registrant change. The governing ccTLD authority is SWITCH, the designated registry for .ch and .li domains. Unlike most gTLD transactions, there is no UDRP pathway for .ch; disputes go through SWITCH's own procedure or the Swiss courts, which makes pre-purchase due diligence the only reliable safety net.

This guide walks each step in sequence, names the trap each step conceals, and explains how to avoid acquiring a domain that arrives with legacy problems already baked in.

Why does .ch need its own escrow approach?

.ch sits entirely outside the UDRP. SWITCH administers the registry under Swiss law, and any challenge to a .ch registration — whether before or after a transfer — proceeds through the SWITCH dispute-resolution rules or the Swiss courts, not through WIPO or the Forum. That procedural gap has direct commercial consequences.

Under the UDRP, a new registrant who acquires a domain in good faith can still face a complaint, but the Policy's legitimate-interest safe harbors give them reasonable protection. Under SWITCH rules, the position is more fact-specific and the Swiss court system moves at a different pace than a two-month UDRP proceeding. A buyer who skips due diligence inherits not only the seller's domain, but the seller's dispute exposure.

There is a second structural difference worth understanding early. SWITCH requires that the new registrant meet Swiss nexus eligibility: the holder of a .ch domain must have a domicile, registered office, or establishment in Switzerland or Liechtenstein, or must use a local administrative contact through an accredited registrar. Buyers from outside the zone who plan to hold the domain directly must verify this requirement with current SWITCH rules before any funds move.

In our practice, we regularly advise buyers who assumed their existing gTLD registrar could handle the .ch transfer as a routine matter. It often cannot. Registrar eligibility for .ch is a separate question from ICANN accreditation, and the transfer process itself flows through SWITCH's own systems on a timeline that is distinct from any gTLD process. Knowing that at the outset shapes how the escrow is structured.

If you are assessing a .ch acquisition and need a pre-purchase read on the domain's history, contact info@cognomenlaw.com before committing to a price.

Step 1: Run the chain-of-title and prior-dispute check

The first step — and the one most buyers compress or skip — is establishing what has happened to this domain before you saw the listing. A chain-of-title check on a .ch domain covers three questions: who is the current registrant of record at SWITCH, how many times has the domain changed hands, and is there any active or recent dispute against it?

SWITCH publishes a WHOIS/RDDS record for each .ch domain. The record shows the current registrant name and the accredited registrar. It does not, however, surface the domain's full transfer history or any settled dispute. That information requires a separate inquiry. We check historical WHOIS snapshots, archived registration data, and — where available — SWITCH dispute-procedure records. A domain that was once the subject of a Swiss court proceeding, or that was transferred under legal compulsion rather than voluntary sale, carries a flag that standard WHOIS will not show.

The trap in Step 1 is assuming that a clean current WHOIS record means a clean history. It does not. A domain can have cleared a prior dispute by settlement, with conditions attached to the settlement that the current seller has not disclosed. If you acquire the domain without discovering that condition, you may find yourself bound by an agreement you never signed — or you may acquire a domain that a third party has a documented prior claim to, giving them grounds to challenge the transfer under Swiss law.

Practical note: check the domain's content history as well. A domain that previously resolved to a website targeting a competitor's trademark, or that carried pay-per-click advertising on a competitor's brand terms, creates the kind of bad-faith use record that panels and courts treat as a continuing characteristic of the domain — even after a transfer. Acquiring that domain does not erase the record.

Step 2: Verify SWITCH eligibility and registrar mechanics

Before drafting any agreement, confirm that your proposed holding structure actually qualifies to hold a .ch domain under current SWITCH rules. SWITCH maintains published eligibility criteria; those criteria are the governing standard, and they can change. Any legal analysis that is not based on the current published SWITCH rules is a guess.

The two common eligibility structures for non-Swiss buyers are: (a) establishing a Swiss or Liechtenstein-based legal entity as registrant; or (b) appointing an accredited registrar in Switzerland that agrees to serve as the administrative contact. Both approaches work. Each has different cost, administrative burden, and legal-exposure profiles. Option (a) is cleaner from a dispute-risk standpoint, because the registrant of record is the entity with legal standing to defend or pursue SWITCH proceedings; option (b) creates a dependency on the registrar that must be managed contractually.

The trap in Step 2 is completing the purchase and then discovering that the transfer cannot be confirmed at SWITCH because the buyer's proposed holding structure does not satisfy the current eligibility rules. At that point, the funds are in escrow, the seller wants to close, and the buyer is scrambling to set up a Swiss entity on a compressed timeline. Fixing the structure before signing the agreement eliminates that risk entirely.

Also confirm, at this stage, which registrar will handle the receiving end of the transfer. SWITCH-accredited registrars vary in their process for incoming domain transfers, their technical timelines, and their responsiveness to transfer authorization requests. In a recent matter — a .ch mid-market acquisition, spring 2025 — a mismatch between the seller's outgoing registrar and the buyer's chosen receiving registrar added several weeks to a transaction that had otherwise been negotiated cleanly. The escrow period was extended twice before the technical transfer completed.

For a read on whether your proposed holding structure meets SWITCH eligibility, email info@cognomenlaw.com. We handle .ch transaction due diligence as a discrete engagement, separately from any dispute work.

How should the escrow arrangement be structured for .ch?

Escrow for a .ch domain transaction serves one purpose: ensuring that neither side bears the full performance risk during the window between agreement and confirmed SWITCH transfer. That window is where most failures occur. A well-structured escrow arrangement closes the gap.

The mechanics are as follows. The parties agree on a written domain purchase and transfer agreement, signed before any funds or transfer authorizations move. That agreement specifies the domain, the price, the conditions for release of funds (typically SWITCH confirmation of the registrant change), and the escrow agent's role. Funds are deposited into the escrow account — typically held by a neutral third-party escrow service that specializes in domain transactions — simultaneously with the seller's initiation of the SWITCH transfer process. The escrow agent holds funds until the buyer's registrar confirms that the domain appears in the buyer's account at SWITCH. Only then are funds released to the seller.

Three structural details matter for .ch specifically. First, the transfer-confirmation standard must be defined precisely in the escrow instructions: "the domain appears in the buyer's SWITCH account" is cleaner than "the transfer is complete," because "complete" is ambiguous if the registrar has received the domain but not yet updated RDDS. Second, the escrow period must be long enough to accommodate SWITCH's actual technical timeline for transfers — not a gTLD timeline assumed to apply by analogy. Third, the governing law and dispute-resolution clause in the escrow agreement itself should be specified; for .ch transactions, Swiss law is the natural choice, and the agreement should name a Swiss forum for any escrow dispute.

The trap in Step 3 is using an escrow service designed for US gTLD transactions that does not account for SWITCH's transfer mechanics. Some generic escrow platforms issue a "transfer complete" confirmation on receipt of an EPP authorization code — before SWITCH has actually updated the registrant. If funds are released on that trigger, and the SWITCH update subsequently fails or is challenged, the buyer has paid for a domain they do not hold.

We advise structuring the release trigger around a live SWITCH WHOIS/RDDS check, not a registrar-side acknowledgment, and building a clear dispute-resolution clause into the escrow instructions for the event that transfer confirmation is delayed beyond an agreed outside date.

Step 3: Draft the transfer agreement for Swiss law compliance

The transfer agreement is not a formality. It is the document that will govern the entire transaction if something goes wrong — and it needs to be drafted with Swiss legal context in mind, not imported from a template designed for .com transactions under US law.

A .ch domain transfer agreement should cover: identification of the domain and the current registrant of record; representations by the seller about clear title (no pending disputes, no court orders, no charge or security interest over the domain), authority to transfer, and accuracy of the SWITCH registration data; the purchase price and escrow mechanics; conditions precedent to closing (SWITCH eligibility confirmed; registrar acceptance confirmed); the transfer-authorization steps and timing; remedies for breach or failed transfer; and governing law and jurisdiction. For buyers acquiring the domain as part of a larger brand-protection strategy, the agreement should also address what happens if a SWITCH dispute or Swiss court action is commenced against the domain between signing and closing.

The trap in Step 4 (the drafting stage) is a representation gap on the seller's side. Sellers routinely warrant that they are the "lawful owner" of the domain. That warranty is often meaningless in practice, because .ch domain registrations are not title documents — SWITCH registration creates a technical record, not a property right in the civil-law sense. The more useful representation is that the seller has no knowledge of any third-party claim to the domain, no pending SWITCH dispute, no Swiss court action, and no prior agreement to transfer the domain to a different party. Carving out knowledge explicitly, rather than accepting a bare "lawful owner" warranty, gives the buyer a cleaner legal position if a prior claim surfaces after closing.

What evidence decides whether the acquisition was clean?

If a dispute arises after the transfer — whether through SWITCH's dispute procedure or before the Swiss courts — the buyer's position depends on the evidence of what was checked and when. Good-faith acquisition of a .ch domain is a defense, but it is a factual defense. It requires documented proof of the diligence performed before the transfer, not an assertion that diligence was performed.

The evidence that matters is: the WHOIS/RDDS records pulled before signing (dated screenshots, not memory); the content-history check (archived website screenshots, advertising records); the written transfer agreement with the seller's representations; the escrow instructions and the release confirmation; and the SWITCH transfer-confirmation record. Collectively, these establish a timeline: before signing, the buyer checked; the seller represented; the escrow held; and SWITCH confirmed. That timeline is the clean chain-of-title record.

In our experience advising registrants in SWITCH-adjacent disputes, the single most common evidence gap is the absence of a dated pre-purchase content check. A buyer who can show a SWITCH WHOIS screenshot but cannot show what the domain resolved to at the time of purchase is in a weaker position when a third party alleges the domain was already being used abusively before the transfer. The archived content check is, in practice, the easiest piece of evidence to obtain and the most frequently omitted.

One further point: if the domain was previously involved in a Swiss court action or SWITCH dispute, that history is public — at least in part. A prior adverse finding against the domain (or against the seller as registrant) is not necessarily fatal to the acquisition, but it must be factored into the purchase price, the representations demanded, and the post-closing dispute plan. Acquiring a domain with a known prior dispute history without adjusting the transaction structure is not due diligence. It is a risk acceptance without a plan.

Step 4: Handle the SWITCH transfer mechanics correctly

The SWITCH transfer process is the operational core of the transaction. Getting it right requires coordinating between the seller's outgoing registrar, the buyer's receiving registrar, and SWITCH itself. All three must be aligned before the escrow release trigger is activated.

SWITCH uses an authorization-code process for domain transfers. The seller (outgoing registrant) requests the authorization code from their registrar; the registrar releases it; the buyer's registrar submits it to SWITCH along with a transfer request. SWITCH then validates the request, confirms eligibility, and updates the registrant record. That process has a defined technical window, and it can be delayed or rejected if any element is incorrect — including, importantly, if the buyer's proposed registrant entity does not satisfy SWITCH's eligibility criteria at the time of the transfer request.

The trap in Step 5 is a timing mismatch between the escrow structure and the SWITCH technical window. Some transfer agreements specify a closing date tied to business-day calendars that do not account for SWITCH's processing timeline or for Swiss public holidays. If the outside date in the escrow agreement passes before SWITCH confirms the transfer — because the timeline was set based on gTLD assumptions — the escrow may automatically return funds to the buyer while the technical transfer is still mid-process, leaving both parties in an undefined state.

Build in adequate buffer. In our transactional work, we recommend that the escrow outside date be set with a margin beyond the expected SWITCH technical window, with a clear mechanism for extension by mutual agreement if the transfer is delayed for a documented technical reason (as distinct from a failure of either party's obligations).

What if SWITCH procedures or the Swiss courts become relevant after closing?

For a buyer who has completed a clean acquisition — documented due diligence, written agreement, properly structured escrow, SWITCH confirmation of transfer — the risk of a successful post-transfer challenge is materially lower than for one who skipped those steps. It is not zero. A third party with a prior, undisclosed claim may still bring a challenge through the SWITCH dispute procedure or before the Swiss courts.

The SWITCH dispute procedure addresses abusive registrations under its own rules. The Swiss courts — which are the primary venue for .ch disputes where SWITCH procedures do not apply — move on a civil litigation timeline that is substantially longer than an administrative domain proceeding. Unlike a UDRP case, which typically concludes in roughly two months, Swiss court proceedings can run considerably longer and at greater cost. For a buyer with a documented, clean acquisition, the litigation posture is generally strong: the chain-of-title evidence assembled during due diligence becomes the central exhibit. For a buyer who did not assemble that evidence, the dispute becomes a factual contest with a more uncertain outcome.

One comparison is worth making explicit. Under the UDRP, a domain dispute is resolved by a panel applying a defined three-element test, with a result — transfer or cancellation — that the registrar implements within days of the decision. Under Swiss court proceedings, the process involves pleadings, evidence production, hearings, and potentially appeals. The costs and timelines are not comparable. For a brand owner or domain investor acquiring a .ch domain, this means that avoiding a post-transfer dispute is not merely preferable — it is, practically speaking, the entire value of the due-diligence and escrow process.

In a recent matter — a .ch domain claimed by a Geneva-based brand owner, autumn 2025 — we advised a buyer who had acquired the domain through a poorly structured transaction with no prior-dispute check. A third party surfaced shortly after closing with documented evidence of a prior settlement agreement with the original registrant. The buyer's position was defensible but required litigation in Switzerland, with local litigation counsel engaged in that jurisdiction, at a cost and timeline that substantially exceeded the purchase price of the domain itself. The outcome of that matter depended entirely on the factual record — which, for this buyer, was incomplete.

That situation is avoidable. The steps in this guide exist because the Swiss legal system will ask exactly the same questions at the point of a challenge that we ask at the point of due diligence. The answer is either in the file, or it is not.

Related at COGNOMEN

• Domain transactions, due diligence, and brand-protection monitoring across gTLD and ccTLD zones
• Recovering a lapsed domain in .io and other ccTLD zones where registrant records are disputed
• Court action for cybersquatting in .biz and related proceedings where arbitration is insufficient