Asides

WIPO DISPUTES RISE

Pingdom.com just published an interesting article analyzing the upsurge in WIPO disputes over the past five years. They found that the number of WIPO cases has doubled since 2003. That reversed a trend from 2000-2003 that saw disputes dropping each year.

While Pingdom posits that the introduction of Google Adsense might be the key factor in the increasing number of domain disputes, a more significant factor may be the continued increase in domain values that began in late 2003 after the dotcom recession ended.

When mainstream media started reporting on the domain name boom, awareness of the high value of good domains became far more widespread. More and more, lawyers advised clients to secure their domains, or perhaps initiate proceedings to obtain valuable domains.

It is rather odd that WIPO case volumes would shoot up at the same time that covetous parties looked for ways to get their hands on valuable digital identity assets without paying market value for them. The law societies regulating legal practitioners should look closely at the trend and be aware that lawyers may advise clients to legal rather than commercial solutions when a precious asset is owned by another party.

What is clear to us is this: those with domain names see their value. Those without domain names decry and denounce their value, and suggest the values are inordinate. We believe that those who have failed to acquire and secure their digital identity have the most expensive price to pay. Now that domainers are beginning to develop their domains, rather than warehouse them, the real value of the underlying assets is going to rise, and the WIPO case loads are going to rise further.

Looking ahead, Goallover predicts that we will see cases brought merely for a “slip” in the global world of trademarks and rights - wherein a plaintiff sues a domain owner for an accidental infringement and tries to recover the domain - rather than simply paying a reasonable fair market price for an asset.

© 2009 GOALLOVER.