E-Arbitration-T Project - Online Dispute Resolution

International Online Dispute Resolution Competition Invitation 2006

The 5th Anniversary International Competitions for Online Dispute Resolution are open for registration! The free competitions offer law students worldwide an opportunity to practice and demonstrate their ADR and litigation skills working in a technological environment on the international plane.

The only requirements are that students have access to the internet and permission of a faculty member to participate. Student competitors are evaluated anonymously by experienced professionals from ADR and Litigation from around the world
. Read the rest of this entry »

The aim of this article is to analyse the prospective use of online dispute resolution mechanism (ODRM) in India. The necessity of the same has arisen due to the growing use of alternative dispute resolving mechanism (ADRM) in India to reduce the burdening of the already overburdened courts in India. The popularity and use of ADRM is increasing but it can achieve its best only if the same is integrated with the information technology.

I. INTRODUCTION

The swift growth of e-commerce and web site contracts has increased the potential for conflicts over contracts which have been entered into online. This has necessitated a solution that is compatible with online matters and is netizens centric. This challenging task can be achieved by the use of ODRM in India. The use of ODRM to resolve such e-commerce and web site contracts disputes are crucial for building consumer confidence and permitting access to justice in an online business environment. These ODRM are not part and parcel of the traditional dispute resolution machinery popularly known as judiciary but is an alternative and efficacious institution known as ADRM. Thus, ADR techniques are extra-judicial in character. They can be used in almost all contentious matters, which are capable of being resolved, under law, by agreement between the parties. They have been employed with very encouraging results in several categories of disputes, especially civil, commercial, industrial and family disputes. These techniques have been shown to work across the full range of business disputes like banking, contract performance, construction contracts, intellectual property rights, insurance, joint ventures, partnership differences etc. ADR offers the best solution in respect of commercial disputes. However, ADR is not intended to supplant altogether the traditional means of resolving disputes by means of litigation. It only offers alternatives to litigation. There are a large number of areas like constitutional law and criminal law where ADR cannot substitute courts. In those situations one has to take recourse of the existing traditional modes of dispute resolution. Read the rest of this entry »

Seventh annual online dispute resolution Cyberweek

The Center for Information Technology and Dispute Resolution at the University of Massachusetts (CITDR) invites you to participate in the seventh annual online dispute resolution Cyberweek.

This is an all-online Web based conference with no fee for participation and registration. A few of the opportunities planned for Cyberweek include: Read the rest of this entry »

E-Arbitration-T, the University of Massachusetts and the ODR - Center for Information Technology and Dispute Resolution are pleased to announce the Online Dispute Resolution distance learning course during the spring 2005 semester.

A detailed outline of the course can be found at the ODR - Center for Information Technology and Dispute Resolution

The course will be taught by Daniel Rainey, Director of Alternative Dispute Resolution Services at the National Mediation Board. Read the rest of this entry »

A lot of dispute resolution business comes to the UK. Between 6,000 and 8,000 cases find their way here each year for arbitration or other forms of mediation, such as ADR. At least half of this is related to shipping industry disputes, processed in the UK on behalf of Lloyds of London, but there is a significant amount of commercial dispute resolution too.

Kieran Flatt asks Alan Connarty, director of operations at the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators, why his organisation is championing the cause of electronic dispute resolution in some cases. Read the rest of this entry »

What is the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy Database (UDRP-DB)?

The Uniform Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP) established a process as well as a policy, a set of procedures for resolving domain name disputes as well as a set of standards to be employed in making decisions. The principal standard is ?bad faith? but in order to determine whether a domain name holder?s behavior violates this standard, a fairly detailed process was put in place for selecting panelists, obtaining and exchanging information, reaching a decision within a specified time period, and, depending upon the decision of the panelist, changing, canceling or preserving the registration.

The UDRP process, like all legal processes, consists of a string of coordinated communication and information processing activities. Parties, panelists and providers must acquire, retrieve, understand, communicate and evaluate information in order to reach the end point of the process. If any of these informational activities are burdensome, the process may not operate efficiently, and, if more burdensome for one party than the other, the process may be unfair. For example, obstacles placed in the way of searching for information can affect whether certain arguments are made and how they are framed, whether costs are higher than they need to be, whether professional expertise is needed, and even whether a respondent decides to participate in the process.

Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy Database (UDRP-DB) Homepage

The UDRP-DB helps those who need information about UDRP decisions to actually obtain it, and it is more efficient information retrieval system to be put in place so that parties, lawyers, panelists, and others can obtain the information that they need in a systematic way.

Section 4J. of the UDRP states that. All decisions under this Policy will be published in full over the Internet. By the time as few as ten or twenty decisions appeared in early 2000, users of the UDRP recognized that there was a problem. While providers could post decisions at little cost and any user with a Web browser could read a decision, every additional case posted made it harder to find out which case one might want to read. One could read decisions which one could find but the growing universe of decisions made finding information in decisions increasingly difficult. Read the rest of this entry »

Online Dispute Resolution: a Technical Solution for Conflicts

Tuesday 7 December 2004, 14:00 - 17:00 at Tilburg University, Building A, Room AZ 186
ICTs have the potential to enhance and revolutionize conflict resolution mechanisms by making these processes more efficient and cheaper. The lectures will give an in-depth introduction to the emerging field of Online Dispute Resolution (ODR) and will discus the benefits of and challenges for ODR technology. Read the rest of this entry »

Registration for the 4th Annual International Competitions for Online Dispute Resolution (ICODR 2005) is open again. The competitions will be held early next year.
The goal is to enhance worldwide law student understanding of online dispute resolution. Competitions are being held again in negotiation, mediation, and arbitration and a prototype litigation competition is being started this year. ICODR is open to law students anywhere in the world and is free. Read the rest of this entry »

International Law Moot Court Competition, defeating the University of Georgia and Columbia University in elimination rounds. The HLS team consisted of second-year students Naomi Loewith and Hugo Torres, first-year student Erica Fung, and third-year student Nathaniel Stankard. In addition to winning the national title, the team advanced to the world quarterfinals before being defeated by eventual finalist Singapore.

Harvard won the right to represent the northeast region of the United States in international competition after claiming victory in the regional championship held in February. This year marked the sixth consecutive year that a team from Harvard Law School has attended the international rounds, which this year included 94 teams from 80 nations. Those competitors were drawn from 529 teams from 85 countries.

Widely recognized as the most prestigious international law moot court competition in the world, the Jessup was co-founded by Harvard Law school in 1959. This year’s problem addressed the jurisdiction and admissibility of cases before the International Criminal Court, as well as the legality of Security Council actions. Read the rest of this entry »

Online Dispute Resolution News A Colleague writes “Efforts by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) to combat the abusive registration of trademarks as domain names, or cybersquatting, made significant headway in 2003 although the problem persists most notably for high-value brands around the world. Since the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP) went into effect in December 1999, through 2003, WIPOs Arbitration and Mediation Center has handled some 6,000 disputes, covering 10,000 domain names.

“While daily filings with WIPO are less now than in the early days of the UDRP, we need to continue our efforts to ensure that the rights of legitimate trademark owners are not diluted,” said Mr. Francis Gurry, Deputy Director General of WIPO, who oversees the work of the Center. “Reducing the practice of cybersquatting is an important element in enabling the Internet to develop as a secure and reliable environment which inspires confidence on the part of the ever-growing number of Internet users,” he observed. “The fact that over 80 percent of the WIPO expert decisions went in favor of the trademark holder, be it a large multinational corporation or a small or medium-sized business, underlines the bad faith inherent in this practice,” Mr. Gurry further noted. Read the rest of this entry »