After only three quarters of the year, the number of cases filed at WIPO, which is the largest and most active of all of the domain name dispute providers, has already almost reached the level for the total number of cases in 2020.
That’s just one of the headlines from the newest issue of GigaLaw’s Domain Dispute Digest (Q3 2021).
The Digest also reports that across the five active service providers for the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP) — WIPO, the Forum, the Czech Arbibtration Court, the Hong Kong International Arbitration Centre, and the Canadian International Internet Dispute Resolution Centre — there were 1,634 UDRP decisions that included 3,354 domain names. That’s a modest 1 percent increase in the number of decisions and an 8.9 percent increase in the number of domain names.
These percentage increases are a lot lower than in the previous quarter, when the number of UDRP cases jumped 13.8 percent, but any growth is still significant, especially given how long domain name dispute cases have been on the rise. And if the trend continues in the fourth quarter of 2021, not only will this be another record-setting year, but the spike could be as high as 20 percent for the entire year.
Plus, the increase says something both about the prolific amount of cybersquatting that exists as well as the seriousness with which trademark owners are taking the issue and filing complaints under the UDRP and other domain name dispute policies.
The Digest reports that the UDRP remains an incredibly effective tool for trademark owners, with more than 93% of decisions resulting in orders to transfer the disputed domain names. On the other hand, the Digest notes that trademark owners won only about 75% of their cases under the Uniform Rapid Suspension System (URS), an alternative dispute policy.
The Digest provides significant additional details and data, including information about the largest UDRP case in the quarter (filed by Facebook and WhatsApp), the most commonly disputed TLDs (.xyz takes second place to .com), the industries most active in UDRP proceedings (tobacco, financial services, and online gaming top the list), and much more.
