Statement of the World Intellectual Property Organization (wipo) Internet Governance Forum (igf) Athens, Greece, October 30 to November 2, 2006



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Statement of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO)

Internet Governance Forum (IGF)

Athens, Greece, October 30 to November 2, 2006

The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) welcomes the convening of the Internet Governance Forum stemming from the World Summit on the Information Society. WIPO has taken an active part in all stages of the WSIS and we see this new initiative as a concrete step to build and further develop international understanding on a range of issues.


On behalf of WIPO Director general Dr Kamil Idris, we are also pleased to share our views on the role of intellectual property in the digital economy and in the process of convergence among the information technology (IT) industry, telecoms and IP owners.
Continued and sustainable growth of the Information Society depends upon an environment of trust and security. Intellectual property plays a key, if complex, role to encourage creativity, innovation, fostering economic growth in both developed and developing countries. To policy-makers and regulators, the challenge today is to preserve the incentive to create new works and use new technologies to distribute them to users in the face of the huge competitive threat from illicit use of technology by infringers.
The increasing importance of intellectual property does not necessarily refer to new international rules. Indeed, the international standard for copyright in the digital environment is largely in place already, thanks to the adoption in 1996 of the WIPO Internet Treaties, which have provided legal responses to the challenges of the new digital technologies. The expected adoption in 2007 of the broadcasting treaty will further consolidate this framework.
This rather means that both IP owners and users need to have confidence that their rights and needs will be observed and that they can properly exercise and exploit intellectual property rules in the new environment. New licensing schemes and rights management models, the increasing development of collaborative initiatives for creating, transmitting and sharing creative content on line, the relationship of intellectual property and technology in areas such as standards and digital rights management (DRM), are examples of these initiatives on the exercise and enforcement of rights and their connection to technology
Both individual creators and the creative industries have a great interest in seeing that access to content can take place for as many users and in as many formats as possible. Accessibility, usability, portability are new benchmarks by means of which creative content can be enjoyed continuously. Interoperability will increasingly play a key role in the development of efficient ICT standards and in ensuring that users fully reap the advantages of an interactive environment. This also puts a new emphasis on limitations and exceptions to copyright and user rights in areas such as freedom of expression and access to information. Interoperability of ICT standards will need to be further promoted especially in areas such as digital rights management (DRM), as a way to avoid fragmentation of the online cultural market and as a way to bridge the digital divide and the technological gap in developing countries.
Mr Chairman, striking the right balance between rights and public policy goals has been one of the continuous objectives of our member states in negotiating international norms and laws under WIPO’s auspices. Recent member states proposals to introduce in the broadcasting treaty, public interest clauses relating to the defense of competition, the protection of cultural diversity and access to knowledge, have actually received large support.

This balance will continue to be pursued at the international level, while striving to empower all countries to take advantage of the flexibilities that have been provided in the international legal system and continuously taking into account the development dimension of intellectual property as currently reflected in the ongoing discussions relating to a WIPO development agenda.



Coming now to UDRP disputes, WIPO’s experience shows that theseare heavily concentrated in the .com domain, attention must also be paid to the establishment of robust preventive mechanisms against abusive registration in new gTLDs.
The UDRP’s popularity stems from its cost-effectiveness, the predictability of the process and swift enforcement of the results. Frequent users of the UDRP include the entertainment industry, pharmaceutical companies, IT firms and a significant number of small-to-medium-sized businesses who favor the UDRP over traditional litigation, because they consider it to be a far quicker and cheaper way of protecting their trademark rights against cybersquatting. Many UDRP decisions involve high-value brands that fall prey to cybersquatters; cases handled by the WIPO Center have involved most of the 100 largest international brands by value. Numerous well-known individuals, including Madonna, Julia Roberts, Eminem, Pamela Anderson, J K Rowling, Morgan Freeman, Ronaldinho and Lance Armstrong have also used the Center’s services.
The UDRP, which was proposed by WIPO and has become accepted as an international standard for resolving domain name disputes, is designed specifically to discourage and resolve the abusive registration of trademarks as domain names. Under the UDRP, a complainant must demonstrate that the disputed domain is identical or confusingly similar to its trademark, that the respondent does not have a right or legitimate interest in the domain name and that the respondent registered and used the domain name in bad faith.
The Internet Domain Name System (DNS) raises a number of challenges for the protection of intellectual property, which, due to the global nature of the Internet, call for an international approach. WIPO has addressed these challenges since 1998 by developing specific solutions, most notably in the First and Second WIPO Internet Domain Name Processes. In particular, the WIPO Arbitration and Mediation Center (Center) provides trademark owners with an efficient international mechanism to deal with the bad faith registration and use of domain names corresponding to their trademark rights.
This document provides an update on the domain name related activities of WIPO, including the status of the recommendations made by the Member States of WIPO in the context of the Second WIPO Internet Domain Name Process.


Domain Names and Trademarks



Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy
The UDRP was adopted by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) on the basis of recommendations made by WIPO in the First WIPO Internet Domain Name Process. The UDRP is limited to clear cases of bad faith, abusive registration and use of domain names. It does not prevent either party from submitting a dispute to a competent court of justice. However, the UDRP has proven highly popular among trademark owners, and very few cases that were decided under the UDRP were also brought before a national court of justice.
WIPO UDRP proceedings have so far involved parties from 131 countries and been conducted in 12 different languages, namely (in alphabetical order), Chinese, Dutch, English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish, in function of the language of the applicable registration agreement of the domain name at issue. The List of WIPO Domain Name Panelists who decide UDRP cases includes trademark experts from 55 countries in all continents.
WIPO has made numerous contributions to help ensure fair and transparent UDRP procedures. These include a searchable Legal Index providing parties and panelists with categorized online access to all UDRP decisions rendered by WIPO panels, and an Overview of WIPO Panel Views on Selected UDRP Questions. These popular online tools have enhanced the consistency and reasoning of decisions taken under the UDRP and help parties assess their chances in UDRP proceedings. In addition, the Center regularly organizes Domain Name Dispute Resolution Workshops for interested parties1 and meetings of its Domain Name Panelists.
On a policy level, the Center has used its domain name dispute resolution experience in a report on the IP aspects of introducing generic Top Level Domains (gTLDs). This report, which had been prepared at the request of ICANN, recommends the establishment of a uniform mechanism designed to prevent the abusive registration of domain names during the introduction of new gTLDs. Such a preventive mechanism would be in addition to the curative relief option provided by the UDRP.
Country Code Top Level Domains
While the mandatory application of the UDRP is limited to domain names registered in gTLDs, such as .biz, .com, .info, .net and .org, the Center also assists many country code Top Level Domain (ccTLD) registries in their establishment of registration conditions and dispute resolution procedures that conform with international standards of intellectual property protection. These procedures are mostly modeled after the UDRP, but may take account of the particular circumstances and needs of individual ccTLDs. As at June 2006, the Center provides domain name dispute resolution services to 47 ccTLD registries and is in consultation with a number of additional ccTLDs.


Domain Names and Other Identifiers

The Second WIPO Internet Domain Name Process concerned the relationship between domain names and five types of identifiers other than trademarks that had not been addressed in the First WIPO Internet Domain Name Process, namely, International Nonproprietary Names for pharmaceutical substances (INNs), the names and acronyms of international intergovernmental organizations (IGOs), personal names, geographical identifiers and trade names.


In conclusion, Mr Chair this meeting is addressing the implications for policymakers of a world where value lies increasingly in intellectual rather than physical capital, and where access to knowledge is critical to many spheres of human activity, including human development. Through norm setting, technical assistance, capacity building, technology transfer, WIPO’s whole range of activities are aimed at building the necessary confidence to support and enhance the legitimate economic, cultural and social aspirations of all countries.


1See the list of events organized by the Center at http://arbiter.wipo.int/events.



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