The Arab Society for Intellectual Property (ASIP) and the Arab Intellectual Property Mediation and Arbitration Society (AIPMAS) submitted on 28 September 2010 a proposal to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) to be accredited as an Official Dispute Resolution Provider under the Unifrom Domian Dispute Resoluation Policy (UDRP).
If approved by ICANN, a new center will be established for that purpose in Amman, Jordan called “Arab Center for Domain Name Dispute Resolution (ACDR)”.
ICANN has approved various dispute resolution providers for resolving conflicts over domain names in cyberspace (WIPO in Geneva, National Arbitration Forum in the US and the Arbitration Court Arbitration Center for Internet Disputes in the Czech Republic).
There is also one centre for Asia namely the Asian Domain Name Dispute Resolution Center with offices in Beijing, Hong Kong, Seoul and Kula Lumpur. I think the submitters of the proposal have to convince ICANN that there is a real need to establish such a center for the region.
The eResolution center in Canada although was approved by ICANN has stoped providing domain name resolution services for financial reasons. As far as I know, there is no domain name case that was brought before any Arab country in local court and there is no single law that was issued to deal with the problem of “cybersquating”.
There were a number of domain names cases that have been brought by trade mark holders and registrants from the Arab world. Most of these cases were resolved before WIPO and not other domain name dispute resolution. WIPO currently has the highest number of domain name cases that are filled before any dispute resolution provider.
The most important domain name case that was related to the Arab world is the one that was filed by the Arabic satellite TV channel Al Jazeera against Aljazeera English Magazine for the transfer of the domain name aljazeera.com. The Arabic satellite TV channel Al Jazeera lost badly the case D 2005-0309 (reverse domain name hijaking) since the panelist found that it abused the UDRP administrative proceedings (although it was presented by one the top local law firms in the Arab World Al Tamimi and Co in Dubai).
ICANN allows anyone to submit comments on the proposals to this email acdr-proposal@icann.org and there is now already few comments available here http://forum.icann.org/lists/acdr-proposal/
See also http://www.icann.org/en/announcements/announcement-28sep10-en.htm
