On 19 October, Dot Trademark TLD Holding Company Limited (“Dot Trademark”) co-organized a seminar with Hong Kong International Arbitration Centre (HKIAC) on the topic of “The Evolution in Disputes Resolution”. The event attracted over 80 guests which consists of intellectual property lawyers, domain name panelists and in-house counsel and scholars.

Mr. Dennis Cai, President of Policy and Compliance of Dot Trademark kicked off the seminar by addressing the recent developments in new generic Top Level Domains (gTLDs), focusing on using verified domain names to battle against cybersquatting. Dennis’ presentation was followed by Mr. David Kreider, Chartered Arbitrator to talk about the Role of ICANN’s role in intellectual property rights protection.

Dennis also moderated a panel session on evolution of intellectual property disputes, which comprised David Kreider, Professor Julien Chaisse (Chinese University of Hong Kong), Mr. Jerome Delacroix (Project Manager, Compliance of OP3FT) and Mr. Anthony Rogers (Former Vice-President of the Court of Appeal of Hong Kong) were invited as panelists.

In the panel discussion session, Mr. Jerome Delacroix first gave a brief introduction on the Frogans technology, which is an innovative secure technology for publishing content in the Internet. The panelists then discussed about Uniform Domain-Name Dispute-Resolution Policy (UDRP) decision theories and salient issues pertaining to new gTLDs. After the interactive discussion on success of UDRP, panel members further explored applying Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) to resolve other types of intellectual property disputes, including disputes in connection with international trade and investment, traditional knowledge, traditional cultural expressions and genetic resources. They exchanged insightful views on the pros and cons of arbitration and mediation in this context, and foresaw that ADR is suitable and will be increasingly used in resolving international intellectual property disputes in the future.
This highly successful seminar ended with a Q&A session, in which Dennis responded to questions on appeal of UDRP decision, number of cases, and trends of UDRP.