One year of domain name dispute resolution in Switzerland

The Dispute Resolution Service launched by SWITCH (the Swiss Education & Research Network) for domain names ending in .ch and .li, run by the Arbitration and Mediation Center of the WIPO, celebrates its first birthday.
Here are the statistic after one year of dispute resolution:

26 procedures involving 54 domain names.
16 procedures were ended without an expert being called in – in most cases due to the parties reaching an agreement.
In ten cases, the parties reached an agreement even before a conciliator was brought in.
Six procedures were decided on by an expert. These include the domain names rhäzünser.ch and feldschlössli.ch, for example.
Five of the decisions stipulated that the domain name was to be transferred to the claimant. In the case of the lenzerheide-valbella.ch decision, a request to this end was rejected.
Four cases are still pending.
A case is generally settled within a maximum of 90 days and costs CHF 500 for the conciliation procedure and, in the event of an expert's decision being required, CHF 2000 or CHF 2500, depending on the number of domain names involved.
The WIPO decisions can be contested by means of civil action. No one has taken up this opportunity to date.

[Press release, 3.3.05]