January 19, 2010
The WIPO Arbitration and Mediation Center yesterday released to the parties the decision in the very first UDRP case to be brought by a trademark owner under WIPO’s recently launched paperless domain name procedure. The dispute, brought by Nokia, over domain names including ‹nokiasex.com›, was resolved in thirty seven days under the new greener, more efficient UDRP filing and notification option. In ordering the transfer of the disputed domain names to the Complainant, WIPO Panelist Brigitte Joppich observed that the case had the hallmarks of abusive use and registration against which the Policy is intended to provide a remedy. The new WIPO facility, which allows for the paperless filing of UDRP pleadings by all WIPO parties, was announced just prior to Christmas last year, following a UDRP Rules change published by ICANN on December 7, 2009. User reactions to the new process have been highly positive, with 182 UDRP disputes filed with the WIPO Center since the new procedure launched on Monday, December 14, 2009. David Taylor, the lawyer for the complainant in this case commented "We are very pleased to finally be able to file a fully electronic UDRP almost exactly a decade after the first UDRP complaint. The paperless eUDRP is a natural progression and benefits not just complainants but equally respondents as well as the environment eliminating the burdensome and wasteful process of preparing numerous paper versions and inherently speeds up the process without any prejudice to the parties." This new, leaner UDRP option is expected to save WIPO UDRP complainants and respondents from around the world time and money, eliminating a need for up to 1 million filed pages a year.