Record Cybersquatting Cases Filed With WIPO In 2018

The World Intellectual Property Organization received a record 3,447 domain name dispute cases from trademark owners in 2018 – up 12 percent from the previous year. In addition, there was a 15 percent increase in alternative dispute resolution cases, according to WIPO.

These cases, filed with WIPO’s Arbitration and Mediation Centre under the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP), covered 5,655 domain names in total, according to a WIPO press release. Note there does not appear to be an actual report available beyond the release and several graphs.

“Domain names involving fraud and phishing or counterfeit goods pose the most obvious threats, but all forms of cybersquatting affect consumers,” WIPO Director General Francis Gurry said in the release.

“WIPO’s UDRP caseload reflects the continuing need for vigilance on the part of trademark owners around the world,” he said.

Of the 2018 dispute cases, the release explains, 13 percent involved domain names registered in new generic top-level domains (gTLDs) including .online, .life, and .app, while 73 percent involved .com domains.

2018 cases also involved parties from 109 countries, with 976 cases filed from the US, 553 from France, 305 from the UK, 244 from Germany, and 193 from Switzerland.

The top sectors of complainant activity were banking and finance with 12 percent of all cases, biotechnology and pharmaceuticals with 11 percent of cases, and Internet and IT with 11 percent of cases.

“Since the WIPO Center administered the first UDRP case in 1999,” it says, “total WIPO case filings passed the 42,500 mark in 2018, encompassing over 78,500 domain names.”

Mediation and Arbitration of Other IP Disputes

In addition to the domain name disputes, in 2018 the WIPO Arbitration and Mediation Center “received 60 mediation, arbitration, and expert determination cases in different areas of intellectual property (IP), an increase of 15% over the previous year,” the release says.

The WIPO Center also received 95 “good-offices” requests, in which no dispute resolution agreement or contract exists between parties.

Of the dispute cases relating to IP, the release explains that “[p]atent-related disputes are the most common in WIPO’s caseload, followed by information and communications technology (ICT), trademark, and copyright disputes.”

These cases include “transactions such as R&D agreements, patent licensing agreements, trademark co-existence agreements, distribution agreements, software agreements, film co-production agreements, and consortium agreements.”

The most frequent users of WIPO mediation and arbitration, the release says, were companies, “including multinationals and small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs)… followed by individuals, research institutions and universities, as well as copyright collective management organizations.”

Parties from Europe, it notes, filed the majority (53 percent) of cases, followed by North America, Asia, Latin America, and Africa.

The WIPO Arbitration and Mediation Center is a neutral, international and non-profit dispute resolution provider that offers time- and cost-efficient alternative dispute resolution (ADR) options,“ that enables “private parties to efficiently settle their domestic or cross-border IP and technology disputes out of court,” according to the WIPO website.

 

Image Credits: WIPO