UDRP Facts from WIPO

The Uniform Dispute Resolution Procedure has become accepted as an international standard for resolving domain name disputes. Here are a few facts from World Intellectual Property Organization's UDRP Center on February 18, 2005:

• An average of 3.4 UDRP and UDRP-based cases were filed per calendar day in 2004, bringing the total number of cases received in 2004 to 1,179 – an increase of 79 cases (or 6.6%) as compared to 2003.
• Of the total of 7,010 UDRP and UDRP-based cases the Center has received, 6,783 (96.76%) have been resolved. In the 5,414 decisions they have rendered, WIPO panels have found for the complainant in 4,512 (83.3%) cases. The remainder of the resolved cases were settled by the parties.
  WIPO’s UDRP and UDRP-based cases filed since 1999 have by now covered over 12,500 separate domain names.
• Most disputes concern international domains, with .com representing over 80% of names involved. However, in 2004 the Center also dealt with 70 cases involving country code top-level domains (ccTLDs), a 37 percent increase over the previous year. So far, parties to WIPO UDRP disputes have come from 124 different countries. Domain names themselves may also be presented in different scripts, such as Chinese, Cyrillic or Korean. The Center has handled 50 such "multilingual name" disputes so far, with further growth expected as the Internet becomes increasingly multilingual.

All domain name decisions handled by the Center are fully indexed and published on the Center’s web site. The WIPO Arbitration and Mediation Center makes available model arbitration and mediation clauses.