NIPC Law

WIPO Head Office, Geneva  Author Emmanuel Berrod Licence  CC BY-SA 4.0   Source Flickr Jane Lambert This is the first of a series of articles on domain name disputes. Schemes for the rapid resolution of domain name disputes such as ICANN's  UDRP (Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy ), Nominet's Dispute Resolution Service ( "DRS" ) and the Czech Court of Arbitration's ".euADR"  are probably the most successful use of alternative dispute resolution ( "ADR" ) on the planet and the topic is important for that reason alone. It is also important because such schemes are probably indispensable for the rapid development of the Internet.  It is inconceivable that businesses would have invested anything that the that they have on the development of on-line platforms for the delivery of many sorts of services without a quick and cheap method of domain name dispute resolution. My Qualifications and Experience I have been int...

Every year at the end of October the World Intellectual Property Organization ( "WIPO" ) , the UN agency for intellectual property holds a one day conference at its head office in Geneva for its domain name dispute resolution panellists . I have been a member of that panel for the last 10 years and I have attended every panellists' meeting since 2005. I have got to know quite a few of my fellow panellists over the years and several of them have become good friends. This year the conference took place on the 28 Oct. In previous years the focus had been on practical issues arising under the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy ( "UDRP" )  such as how to deal with privacy services and what constitutes evidence of registration and use in bad faith. There was some of that this year.   Andrew Lothian  of Demys Ltd  presented an analysis of the decisions where the domain name comprised the trade marks of more than one entity such as Dr. Ing. h...