Intellectual Property News

WIPO RESPONDS TO SIGNIFICANT CYBERSQUATTING ACTIVITY IN 2005

The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) saw a 20% increase in the number of cybersquatting (abusive registration of trademarks as domain names) cases filed in 2005 as compared to 2004. In 2005, a total of 1,456 cybersquatting cases were filed with WIPO’s Arbitration and Mediation Center. This increase represents the highest number of cybersquatting cases handled by the WIPO Center since 2001.

WIPO’s Arbitration and Mediation Center has handled a total of over 8,350 disputes, involving parties from 127 countries and covering some 16,000 domain names since the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP) – a quick and cost effective dispute resolution procedure – went into effect in December 1999. In another development in 2005, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) approved the creation of new generic top-level domains (gTLDs), such as .travel and .jobs, with a number of further domains awaiting introduction in 2006.

"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 Mr. Francis Gurry, Deputy Director General of WIPO who oversees the work of the Center. He further noted that, while WIPO’s experience shows that UDRP disputes are heavily concentrated in the .com domain, attention must also be paid to the establishment of robust preventive mechanisms against abusive registration in new gTLDs. "If domain names are randomly attributed in new domains, intellectual property owners will be forced to compete with cybersquatters for their own trademarks – unless additional preventive safeguards are introduced," he added.

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, because they consider it to be a far quicker and cheaper way of protecting their trademark rights against cybersquatting. Many UDRP decisions involve high-value brands that fall prey to cybersquatters; cases handled by the WIPO Center have involved most of the 100 largest international brands by value. Numerous well-known individuals, including Madonna, Julia Roberts, Eminem, Pamela Anderson, J K Rowling, Morgan Freeman, Ronaldinho and Lance Armstrong have also used the Center’s services

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