 So this is about the WIPO Arbitration Mediation Centre, which deals with intellectual property disputes between private parties by offering certain alternative dispute resolution procedures to enable them to settle their disputes, once and for all, internationally, actually. And it's a relatively recent activity of the organisation, starting up about 20 years ago or so. And the principal area of activity that we have is cyber squatting or internet domain name cases. So these are cases where a trademark owner is alleging that someone has registered a domain name that is either the same as or confusingly similar to the trademark. And obviously, in the domain name space, you have great opportunity for that because there are now 1,200 generic top-level domains in operation. So for a company watching, surveying what's happening to its brand in those space, the space is increasing, it's 1,200 now. And secondly, there is endless variety that you can put. You can put an adjective before the name. You can put more or less flattering. You can alter the typing slightly. There are endless ways in which you can create a domain name registration that is confusingly similar to a mark. And what we see in that area is that the number of cases increases, 10% increase 2016 compared to 2015. We're talking about 3,000 cases. We're talking about cases in which now the so-called new GTLDs, so these are not .com.org, you know, the old GTLDs, but the new ones like .games.shop.stream, they now account for 16% of the caseload that we receive. It's very international, as one would expect with the internet, international set of procedures. So in 2016, our cases, domain name cases, involved parties from 109 countries. The top origin of filings was US, followed by France, Germany, UK, Switzerland. We give you figures on that. And we also give you figures on the various areas of activity, commercial activities, highest being banking and finance, followed by fashion, followed by heavy industry and so on. Just a final word then. We also do, through the Arbitration and Mediation Centre, offer procedures for not for domain name disputes, but generally intellectual property disputes between two parties. And I'm not saying it's very pleasing to see that there, well, I shouldn't be saying it's pleasing to see a lot more disputes, but it's pleasing to see a lot more disputes passing through our centre. So some 60 Mediation and Arbitration cases last year. And these can range from 20,000 euros to literally hundreds of millions of dollars in the value in dispute. So there we are. Eric, do you want to add anything? I think that's it, Director General. I think the figures are up on both counts. Domain name disputes and Arbitration and Mediation are all types of IP disputes. And with further growth of the domain name system, we expect to see those numbers continue to rise. That's one. So your principal motivation may be to divert traffic to your website. So someone looking for Xmark, and there is a slight variation on it, you might be coming up in the search results. And so diverting traffic, diverting eyeballs is number one. Number two is, yes, there are certain people who register something, jump in and register a domain name, and then will arbitrage it in, that is, they will offer it to the true owner, if I may say, at a price which is less than what it would cost them to do the domain name resolution. So you could register a domain name, which is confusingly similar to or the same as a trademark, and then you could say, well, it costs you maybe $10 to register it, and we'll sell it to you for $2,000, which is less than the company would have to pay in legal fees to go through a dispute settlement procedure. Now, of course, a lot of companies are very careful not to get involved in feeding that sort of activity. What's happening to the 3,000 cases that are filed? Are they resolved? Who is resolving them? What's the connection between the 3,000 cases and the 16 variations? Well, obviously, excuse me, in the case of domain name cases, you are dealing with a domain name registration, which is extremely easy to get. You could go online and get it in three seconds, and it's very cheap. $10 is as much as you would have to pay, depending on which provider you're using. So there is a potential for creating mischief there, and there's no screening procedure. There's no authority that looks at a domain name registration, or that's confusingly similar to a trademark. And all of that results from the desire in the early days of the Internet to ensure that regulatory procedures did not slow down this massive embracing of the Internet and growth of the Internet and the possibility of people to go online, register a domain name for a conference, an event, whatever it might be, very easily. And this procedure enables you to cease that activity. So they're all resolved. Some of them are resolved in favour of the domain name applicant. Most of them are resolved in favour of the trademark owner, and that's not surprising, because what we're dealing with is the bad-face registration of a domain name. So it's cyber-scrolling, you know. So who was resolving those? So we have a list of panellists, and the arbitration centre are points of panellists. Usually it's possible to have three panellists. You know, if the parties choose. And our panellists, we had... We used panellists from how many countries there? 47 countries. 47 countries last year. But 60 panellists were established. No, 60. So that's different. So 3,000 cases, first category. Second category is you and I have a dispute about copyright. You know, I claim that you have plagiarised my, you know, article or book or whatever it might be, or you and I had a dispute about patents. So you claim that I am using your technology, which is patented. So it's all possible intellectual property disputes, and they generally are a, you know, much more heavy substance that's involved. The first class is just this, you know... But it's still a panellist who resolves these 3,000 cases. Absolutely. Always. Yeah. Always one, always three. He listens to both sides and then says, this is it. Online procedure. Online procedure. So all, yeah, phalanx online. On the domain inside. On the domain inside, yeah. Could you remind us what happened when you made a decision against one of the parties, and this party has to close, to change the name, and what is the level of compliance? Okay, so... So... Yeah, sure. And do you have an estimation on the economic loss that suffered prime arts because of this situation, this confusion? We'll look, on the first, the system works on a contractual basis, namely that when a domain name registrar, that's someone who can register a domain name for you, is authorised to do so by ICANN, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, they agree that they will abide by the results of what's called the Uniform Dispute Resolution Procedure. And that's this. So they agree that they will implement the results. And when you apply for a domain name, you also agree that you will submit to a procedure that is brought under the UDRP, the Uniform Dispute Resolution Procedure. So if you sue me under that, claiming that I've cyber-squatted your trademark, I am obliged to submit to the procedure, even though some don't bother putting in defences. And the result will be either that I win and there's no cyber-squatting, it's judged, or the registration is cancelled or it is transferred to the winning party. These are the possibilities. There are no damages. And on the second question, we don't have any such estimate, but what we do know is that for a company that has a brand, of course the Internet and the domain name space is a hazardous area for them. So they have to watch what might be happening to their brand and companies will adopt different attitudes. Some will try to stop any possible infringement. That typically might be the case of a high-end fashion or auto-culture company, which doesn't want its reputation anyway diminished on the Internet. And others might say, well, we're just going to be interested in the dot-com area because that's where most space is happening and so on. So it's their strategy to determine how they protect their brand. The way most of them are supporting the country of origin and the respondents that they use in their cases. We do, Eric. At least, of course, we maintain statistics about who are the respondents in the whiteboard cases. A separate question is whether that is representative of the picture of South Scotting as a whole, but that is probably a reasonably fair measure of that. We publish, it's actually annexed two of the press release. We publish the statistics both on the complainant side. This is the trademark filing side, as well as the respondent side. That is those who register the domain names that are being objected against. And we see, as the Director General mentioned, the United States on the complainant side in the position number one, but we also see the United States still today in position one among respondents. That is those registrants who are being contested. However, we see China, which has come up through the ranks over the years of our statistics, being closed by in the second position among respondents that is followed by the United Kingdom, Turkey, Australia, France, India, et cetera. You'll see the listing quite... He stopped, he said, et cetera, when, after India, it was Netherlands. Because he's Dutch. Why do you feel it more as it's the most... Because it's a big company with lots of brands? It's a big company with lots of brands. And a separate question, and we are not sure whether that specifically relates to Philip Morris, is the relationship between, of course, counterfeiting and filing, trademark owners filing this type of case with WIPO against so-called service quarters. I would not presume that it's a big company with lots of brands. It's a big company with lots of brands, and a separate question, but I would not presume I have not done, we have not done the specific statistics on these many Philip Morris cases. But I would not be surprised if you see a fairly typical incidence of allegations of counterfeiting against the respondents, the registrants of those domain names in those cases. But that may explain as well. Yeah. Sorry. Sorry. The percentage of 3,000 cases that come to your attention are of the total cyber and squatting cases. Or are there other ways of resolving the disputes without involving WIPO? I think your question goes not so much to what's the total number of UDIP cases coming to WIPO, which is about 60%, as the Director General mentioned. Your question goes to how many service squatting cases actually make it a formal complaint under this UDIP system. Is that correct? In other words, how many domain name cases, how many infringements, cyber case of cyber squatting are not even seen in this system. That is basically like asking us, would you please measure the tip of the iceberg by comparison to the rest of it. Sorry for the easy metaphor. But we do not know that. It's an interesting statistics domain. I think the best way to understand that it is just merely the tip of the iceberg is to know that in this system and even more so, of course, in court litigation it is the treatment owner that has to A, prepare the case, spot the case, find the case, observe it, the incidents of cyber squatting, B, make the case, write the case, C, file it and D, pay the fee. And so it is quite reasonable to assume that there are extremely high numbers of cyber squatting behind those cases that treatment owners have decided to invest their enforcement budgets into. How much will it cost? The standard fee for up to five domain names in one case for a single member panel, which is 95% or more of all cases decision is $1,500 and that fee has stayed $1,500 and that has stayed stable over the since the inception of the system because we need to keep this a low threshold system by comparison to the alternative of court litigation. Any more questions? Besides John there has been any evidence on cases that the arbitrators have looked at of intentional cyber squatting or covert damage of a command in branding the fact that to undermine a brand Yes, there's lots of cases in which there are very rude words before a brand. Okay, so you know, it might be for example, because I give you an example, only because it happened to be a case warm out and before that might be a rude word .com So if that's what you mean yes, that goes on which is complex No, I was thinking if the evidence found that it was structured by the competition to undermine the competitive brand there is a strategy behind using proper squatting to undermine your competition I hope people don't get ideas from your smart question but it doesn't seem to be the most logical presumption I think because it would be difficult for such a competitor to remain anonymous in this exercise sooner or later one would think that a case comes filed against such a competitor and I think the public relations or public or even legal consequences of that pill in comparison to any gains we don't have any evidence and we should also realize that there are 330 million domain registrations in the world so we will try about 330 million which includes not only the GT of these the generic top of domains but it also includes a component of what I believe today about one third of that which are national domains and so for any for Germany for example so for any party to believe that it could really start to make a material difference in harming reputation of a competitor on such an ocean of domain names I think is a rather tall ambition Can I follow up on that I was working on the other subject so I didn't hear everything but what information do you have about a systemic sort of approach to cyber spotting or not I mean who could it be sort of repeat offenders that are behind this and you know I mean even state actors potentially I mean the answer to the could it be of course yes well what is your evidence we don't have any evidence to suggest this is an area that attracts state activity or attention and well there are some serial respondents let's say so what do you know about them well the typical case of cyber spotting has evolved from you know a rather more incidental demonstration made in order to as the director general mentioned that one of the scenarios sell back for ransom in a sense at a premium the domain name to the third party trademark order that's the classic scenario in essence that got the European system led by the director general in 1999 started the evolution of the cases that we see at WIPO is of course the evolution of the domain name system as a whole what we see here is that professional parties have really started to dominate the registration picture these are the so-called domainers using a technical term here a domainer is not synonymous to a service quarter I think we should say that very clearly but the domainer is an entity often companies individuals behind them that use rather sophisticated technologies and techniques in order to monetize as many domain names as possible the possibility of course exists and is quite likely that among those huge portfolios which can run into the thousands or hundreds of thousands held by one entity names will be scooped up by those domainers that are actually infringing on third party trademark rights so yes there is definitely a systemic pattern to how domain names are being registered and with that by implication comes more systemic consequence in terms of cyber squatting and the cases that we see and they might for example be guessing what companies are going to do in the future what films might be coming out in the future what this, what that and perhaps one other thing to add to what Erik just said is that we do have a search engine for cases on our website here and you may wish to search certain terms and names of political things from there can I just follow that up what do you know about the geographic origin of the people that may be responsible for this cyber squatting and second question you mentioned that there is ransom in the hostage taking scenario hostage takers tend to take hostages from that pay ransom so in other words is Philip Morris repeat target our other companies are they saying okay we'd rather not deal with this and we'll just pay pay off I don't think it's a question of offer we can't give a definite answer to that I mean the indication would be that Philip Morris is very carefully guarding its brands from the cases yes it has more to do with presumed because of the nature of the problem it has more to do with trademark value than wherever that trademark is located and so no trademark is really safe from this wherever it is located and when you hear our director general indicate trends for example in fashion finding or especially under the rendering system there is probably in the link between those developments where the service courting activity and the filing campaigns of the future may shift too and just a final comment maybe is if you compare it to real property you know some people who are in the business of real property might be looking at sites around town where they're expecting some activity and they might want to they might purchase plots in order to be holding it when whoever it is that's planning something larger there is going to have to come along and buy them out so this is an area in which there is some legitimate competitive positioning but also illegitimate just a short one just to be clear is the profit of the fees related to these cases part of the $80 million that you mentioned before actually it's the revenue that we derive rather than profit I would say administering this service is part of the $380 million no no it's of the $380 million 76% PCT about 16 to 18% at Madrid trademarks and about 1% the Hague designs and about 1% arbitration a little bit less than that those are round figures