WIPO’s online reporting functionality beats its competitors.
I write a lot of articles bashing decisions made by World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) panelists in UDRPs. So I think it’s only fair that I give the group props when it’s deserved.
The new top level domain name objection process has reminded me how WIPO’s online reporting systems are way, way better than the competition.
Three organizations are handling top level domain name application objections. WIPO is handling legal rights objections, The International Center of Expertise of the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) is managing both community and limited public interest objections, and The International Centre for Dispute Resolution (ICDR) has string confusion objections.
Of the three, only WIPO has decent online reporting of cases filed and decisions.
This morning I compiled a list of 30 terminated cases at ICC and it was a big pain. Why? Because all of the data in included in 139 page PDF.
Seriously? Have they never heard of databases? I’d even take a spreadsheet over this. Maybe they could take some of the millions they’re bringing in for objection fees and hire a web developer.
ICDR is not much better. The group apparently has a couple different websites, and for a while ICANN was linking to a page that suddenly went missing.
Its cases are also in a PDF, but at least it’s a much shorter table format.
Usability is missing. Once you get to the ICDR objection information page, you have to click on a inconspicuous link in the lower right hand corner to view the list of objections. Then it brings you to a splash page where you have to click another link to see the actual document.
It appears that whatever content management system they’re using generates pages on the fly, too.
The actual decisions are linked to within the PDF, and they open up another PDF file. For a while the hyperlinks weren’t blue, and it wasn’t clear that you could actually click them to see the full decision.
And don’t get me started on the infrequent updating of the ICDR’s spreadsheet. WIPO updates daily.
WIPO’s superior online reporting is also present in UDRP. WIPO’s main competitor, National Arbitration Forum, has far inferior online reporting and searching capabilities.
I’ll continue to bash poor UDRP decisions, but new TLD objections have reminded me that WIPO has something good going for it.
John Berryhill says
IMHO, NAF’s search functionality is better than WIPO’s, but there are some quirks to how far back it will actually search.
Andrew Allemann says
I get weird results often.
I think what I really mean is that WIPO shares a lot more data in an organized fashion than NAF.
When it comes to searching for a party to a UDRP or a panelist, I always use UDRPsearch.com. It’s fastest.
Fido says
The ICC pdf reads decisions, objection types and applications and applicant names that do not match as well…