Doug Isenberg to Speak at WIPO Conference on UDRP's 25th Anniversary

Doug Isenberg of The GigaLaw Firm will speak at the upcoming WIPO Conference in Geneva to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP).

According to WIPO, the daylong event, on April 23, 2025, “will bring together Internet stakeholders to share and exchange their inputs and experiences” and “will include a retrospective on the UDRP, taking stock of jurisprudential trends and looking ahead to the planned review of the UDRP by ICANN.”

Doug’s session, titled “The UDRP in Numbers,” will be moderated by Leena Ballard, WIPO’s senior legal officer for its Internet Dispute Resolution Section, and will also include Deanna Wong of DeLab Consulting in Hong Kong.

As a longtime UDRP panelist for WIPO (and also a panelist for all of the ICANN-approved UDRP service providers), Doug has written hundreds of domain name dispute decisions over the past 20+ years. At the WIPO conference, he will speak about some of the trends he has seen during this time and will also draw on his experience as a frequent representative of parties in UDRP proceedings as well as publisher of “GigaLaw’s Domain Dispute Digest,” a quarterly report about domain name dispute statistics.

Doug Isenberg Speaks at Arizona Bar IP Event

Doug Isenberg spoke on March 6, 2025, at the State Bar of Arizona’s 11th annual “CLE in the Garden” event for intellectual property law attorneys.

The title of Doug’s presentation was “An Insider’s View About Domain Name Disputes Under the UDRP.” He provided an overview of how the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP) works, discussed common mistakes in filing UDRP complaints, reviewed current trends in UDRP decisions, and talked about recent interesting and informative UDRP cases.

The all-day continuing legal education event was held at the Desert Botanical Garden in Phoenix and featured a number of local and nationally recognized speakers.

WIPO Identifies The GigaLaw Firm as 'Top 10' Filer of Domain Name Dispute Complaints

The GigaLaw Firm was one of the “top 10” representatives that filed domain name dispute complaints at the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) in 2024, the United Nations (UN) agency said in a report about cases under the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP) and other policies created to combat cybersquatting.

Led by attorney Doug Isenberg, GigaLaw has been a prolific filer of domain name complaints for many years and filed the largest UDRP complaint ever in 2009. For the first time, WIPO — the most active of the five ICANN-approved UDRP service providers — identified those law firms and others that have represented trademark owners most frequently in cybersquatting cases.

GigaLaw’s clients range from individuals to some of the largest corporations in the world, representing a wide variety of industries, including nearly all of those listed among the top sectors identified in the WIPO report: retail; banking and finance; biotechnology and pharmaceuticals; Internet and IT; heavy industry and machinery; fashion; entertainment; food, beverages and restaurants; media and publishing; and hotels and travel.

In its own analysis of cybersquatting enforcement — GigaLaw’s Domain Dispute Digest — GigaLaw recently reported that domain name disputes under the UDRP rose by 3.1 percent in 2024, an indication that cybersquatting remains a significant problem for trademark owners, and that more than 95 precent of UDRP decisions last quarter resulted in orders to transfer disputed domain names to the trademark owners who filed the complaints.

Doug Isenberg Appointed as Panelist at Asian Domain Name Dispute Resolution Centre

The Asian Domain Name Dispute Resolution Centre (ADNDRC) has appointed Doug Isenberg as a panelist. Doug has already been serving as a panelist for the ADNDRC’s Hong Kong Office (the Hong Kong International Arbitration Centre), but this new appointment allows him to decide cases filed at any of the ADNDRC’s offices under the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP).

The ADNDRC is one of five UDRP dispute providers authorized by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). With this appointment, Doug serves as a panelist for all of them, including the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), the Forum (formerly the National Arbitration Forum), the Czech Arbitration Court (CAC), and the Canadian International Internet Dispute Resolution Centre (CIIDRC).

The ADNDRC has four offices, in Hong Kong, Seoul, Beijing and Kuala Lumpur. In addition to providing services for the UDRP, the ADNDRC also provides services under the Uniform Rapid Suspension System (URS) and several other domain name dispute policies.

As a longtime domain name panelist, Doug has written hundreds of UDRP and other decisions.

Westlaw Quotes Doug Isenberg About Cancellations in Domain Name Disputes

An article published by Thomson Reuters Westlaw Today quotes Doug Isenberg about the unusual situation in which a disputed domain name is cancelled — rather than transferred — in a decision under the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP).

The article discusses a recent decision in a UDRP case brought by the pharmaceutical company Sanofi at the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) involving the domain name <sanofi-asia.com>, which contains the “Sanofi” trademark. Although Sanofi won the case, the panel ordered cancellation of the domain name registration rather than transferring it to Sanofi.

“In my view, if a trademark owner is willing to incur the time and expense of filing a UDRP complaint in the first place, then it should always request a transfer of the domain name, to ensure that the domain name can't fall into the hands of another cybersquatter, which is always possible with a cancellation,” the Westlaw article quotes Doug as saying.

“Some trademark owners might make a decision to request cancellation if they don't want to use the domain name for themselves,” Doug adds in the article. “But I think that's very short-sighted, because it's certainly significantly more efficient — and less expensive — to maintain a domain name that has been transferred instead of having to file yet another UDRP complaint for the same domain name if it is picked up by another cybersquatter.”