A Brief Review of UDRP: Achievements, Challenges and Recommendations

Abstract

After its establishment in 1999, the UDRP has achieved great success despite criticism from many scholars. After the operation of a decade and a half, it is high time to review the mechanism. This paper firstly discusses the fundamental reason for the success of the UDRP - the centralized Internet management structure, as well as its institutional weakness - the unavoidable forum shopping caused by its competitive provider-selection mechanism. It also evaluates some suggestions commonly put forward by scholars, including improvements for the provider-selection mechanism as well as a 'precedent system' and why many of them are unpractical. The last part of the paper, based on the nature of the UDRP, raises some feasible recommendations, including the issuance of 'Comments' and diversification of panelists.