Number of cybersquatting arbitration cases fall in 2011.
Earlier today Kevin Murphy opined about WIPO’s arbitration numbers from last year, basically saying that the data don’t prove an increase in cybersquatting.
In fact, it turns out anyone who wants to use UDRP numbers to talk about cybersquatting needs to say that they show the practice is waning.
That’s for a couple reasons. The big one is that in absolute numbers the number of UDRP cases fell last year. Although WIPO was up marginally, National Arbitration Forum was down to its lowest level of cases in about 5 years.
Domain Name Wire, with the help of UDRPSearch, has been tracking the number of cases filed for years. Although they aren’t official numbers, UDRPSearch shows that NAF handled about 1,750 2070 cases last year. Add that to WIPO’s haul and we’re looking at roughly 4,500 4,836 cases. That’s down from 2010’s 4,873. [Update: 4/4/12: NAF has released its final numbers for 2012. The story has been updated to reflect the actual numbers.]
When you compare the total number of cases to the registered base of .com domains, we’ve hit an all time low in the cybersquatting rate, defined as the number of cases per domain registered.
Yes, I know there are flaws to that number as well. I’m just looking at .com, while some of these cases are for other TLDs. There are other arbitration providers, although they handle just a few dozen cases per year. And there’s not necessarily a correlation between how much cybersquatting is going on and the number of UDRP cases. (It could be there’s a lot more cybersquatting and less enforcement. But you can also look at mass filers like Lego and say they’re skewing the numbers up.)
But that’s exactly the point: any news outlet that tells you cybersquatting is definitely on the rise based on WIPO’s numbers is wrong.
Thurston Howell III says
Yeah, just in time for the new gtld’s to screw things up.
All the more reasons to kep that Pandoras Box sealed shut.
gpmgroup says
Interesting analysis thanks for publishing it. Do you have similar graphs/data for wins & losses? And has the ratio between them varied over time?