On 30 November 2020, the WIPO Arbitration and Mediation Center (WIPO Center) announced the registration of its 50,000th cybersquatting case.
According to the press release, as of November 2020, the WIPO Center has had administered 50,000 cases based on the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP). The proceedings covered “almost 91,000 domain names, and involving parties from over 180 countries. In these cases, if after review by qualified external panelists the domain name is determined to have been registered and to be used in bad faith – the practice of cybersquatting – it is transferred to the trademark-holding complainant party”.
WIPO remarked that the COVID-19 pandemic boosted the number of cybersquatting proceedings filed. Thus, the WIPO Center handled 3,794 cases from January to November 2020, which amounts to a “13% increase over the same period during 2019”. Some of these proceedings involved the domain names <tencentweibo.com>, <plfizer.com>, <facebookloginhelp.net>, <paypalogin.com>, <ladygaga.mobi> and <liomessi.com>.
The 50,000th case refers to the domain name <discoverbankk.com>, as it was revealed by Brian Beckham (head of the Internet Dispute Resolution Section) and Erik Wilbers (director of the WIPO Center) during an interview with Doug Isenberg (GigaLaw).
The WIPO Center provides domain name dispute resolution services that include UDRP-based proceedings. The UDRP is a resolution mechanism created in 1999 by WIPO, which is used by “used by brand owners around the world to combat abuse of their trademarks in domain names”. A “summary of key consensus positions of WIPO experts appointed to decide UDRP cases” can be found in the third edition of the WIPO Jurisprudential Overview.
Review here the WIPO Jurisprudential Overview 3.0.
