WIPO Cybersquatting Cases Reaches a New Record in 2018
May 6, 2019
Biswajit Sarkar - IP Law Firm India
Post time: 5:46 am
According to the Anti-Cybersquatting Consumer Protection Act, cyber squatting refers to registering internet domains containing trademarks with the intention to sell the same to the trademark owner or to a third party. Cyber squatters have a mala fide intention to gain profit from the goodwill of a trademark belonging to someone else.
The World Intellectual Property Organisation, headquartered at Geneva, Switzerland reached a new record when it received 3,447 domain name dispute cases from owners of trademark marking a 12% increase from last year’s figure. According to WIPO, there was also a 15% rise in ADR cases.
The current WIPO director, Mr. Francis Gurry mentioned in the release ““Domain names involving fraud and phishing or counterfeit goods pose the most obvious threats, but all forms of cybersquatting affect consumers.”
The release further highlights a 13% involvement in domain names registered in new generic top-level domains (gTLDs) which includes .online , .life and .app, while 72.88% involved in .com, for 2018.
The year also marked cases from 109 countries with U.S.A, France, U.K., Germany and Switzerland on top of the ladder. India was placed at the 13th position with 50 cases, marking an increase of 16.3% from the 2017 figure. Malta, which was placed at the 6th position filed 135 cases marking a massive increase of 513.6%.
The top areas of WIPO Domain Name Complainant Activity were Banking and Finance; Biotechnology and Pharmaceuticals; and Internet and IT with 12%, 11% and 11% of cases respectively.
Philip Morris, Andrey Ternovskiy and Carrefour were the top three parties who filed domain cases in 2018, with 129, 119 and 59 cases respectively.
The release further mentions that WIPO received sixty Arbitration, Mediation and expert determination cases in different areas of IP which is 15% higher over last year’s figure. The patent-related disputes were the most common followed by ICT disputes in the second place and copyright disputes in the third place. The most frequent users of WIPO mediation and arbitration were the MNCs and SMEs. Patents filed from Europe accounted for 53% of cases, followed by North America (28%), Asia (14%), Latin America (3%), Africa (1%) and Oceania (1%).
Also in 2018, the WIPO Centre collaborated with 15 new national IP and Copyright Offices for encouraging ADR options, which takes the total to 39 with 34% of the offices located in Asia.
