News Roundup

Cybersquatting Increases in 2005

WIPO’s Arbitration and Mediation Center saw a 20 percent increase in the number of cybersquatting cases (abusive registration of trademarks as domain names) filed in 2005 as compared to 2004. The 1,456 cases filed represent the highest number of cybersquatting cases handled in a single year by the Center since 2001.

"Notwithstanding the unique effectiveness of the UDRP as a global remedy against cybersquatting, the fact that WIPO’s caseload in 2005 was the highest in four years - and that many of these cases concern recently registered domain names - underlines the need for continued vigilance by intellectual property owners," said WIPO Deputy Director General Francis Gurry. He also noted that, while UDRP disputes have been heavily concentrated in the .com domain, attention must be paid to the establishment of effective preventive mechanisms against abusive registration in new generic Top Level Domains (gTLDs).

Since the inception of the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP) in December 1999, WIPO’s Arbitration and Mediation Center has handled more than 8,350 disputes, involving parties from 127 countries and covering some 16,000 domain names. The UDRP’s popularity stems from its cost-effectiveness, the predictability of the process and swift enforcement of the results. Frequent users of the UDRP include the entertainment industry, pharmaceutical companies, IT firms, and a significant number of small-to-medium-sized businesses who favor the UDRP over traditional litigation as a quicker and cheaper way of protecting their trademark rights against cybersquatting.

All domain name decisions handled by the Center are indexed and published on the Center’s website (http://arbiter.wipo.int/domains/search/). The new WIPO Overview of WIPO Panel Views on Selected UDRP Questions, created to offer parties and panelists an overview of broad decision trends, is available at http://arbiter.wipo.int/domains/search/overview.

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