WIPO UDRP Cases Up For Fifth Straight Year: What That Means For Brand Owners

On Friday 15 March 2019 the World Intellectual Property Organization released its UDRP statistics for the 2018 calendar year.

As always the information is useful for brand owners and particularly those interested in knowing more about what their peers are doing in the online brand protection space.

The headlines of the Report:

Brand owners filed 3,447 UDRP disputes with the WIPO in 2018. That's very close to ten per calendar day and is approximately 13.5 per business day. 2018 is therefore the fifth straight year that the number of filed cases at the WIPO has seen a significant increase. It's clear that around the world brand owners are increasing the level of commitment to protections against all forms of cybersquatting. There is good reason for this. WIPO attributes the increase to a "proliferation of websites used for counterfeit sales, fraud, phishing, and other forms of online trademark abuse". In particular, WIPO Director General Francis Gurry states "Domain names involving fraud and phishing or counterfeit goods pose the most obvious threats...". Notably, almost complementing the WIPO press release, on 13 March 2019 ZDNet.com reported a recently-released statistic that 45% of UK organisations were compromised by phishing attacks between 2016 and 2018. The countries best-represented amongst the near-3,500 disputes filed are the US (976 cases), France (553), the UK (305), Germany (244) and Switzerland (193). The top sectors were unsurprisingly those with much to lose from a serious phishing scam: banking and finance and biotechnology and pharmaceuticals. This isn't to say that only certain sectors are taking the UDRP seriously: as the report shows, there are frequent filers in the areas of IT, fashion, heavy industry and machinery, retail, entertainment, automotive, hospitality and travel, food and beverages, electronics, media and publishing, transportation, insurance, sports, telecoms and luxury goods. Interestingly, despite the number of cases increasing from last year, the number of domain names addressed is actually down from 2017 and not insignificantly: in 2017, 3074 UDRP cases addressed 6371 domain names. In 2018, the 3447 filed cases addressed 5655 domain names. That's 716 fewer domain names under dispute despite 373 more cases...