WIPO
The UN agency whose arbitration center decides many UDRP domain-name disputes.
- glossary
WIPO (World Intellectual Property Organization) is the United Nations agency responsible for global intellectual property policy, and its Arbitration and Mediation Center is the world's most active provider of UDRP dispute resolution for domain names. When a trademark owner believes a domain was registered in bad faith to exploit their brand — a practice known as cybersquatting — they can file a UDRP complaint with the WIPO Center rather than pursuing costly court litigation. WIPO appoints one or three independent panelists who review written submissions from both parties and issue a binding decision, typically within 45–60 days, that can result in the domain being transferred or cancelled. WIPO handles thousands of cases annually across a broad range of gTLDs and country-code TLDs.
Related keywords
- WIPO
- World Intellectual Property Organization
- UDRP
- domain dispute
- arbitration
Contributors
Namefi is a collective of engineers, designers, and operators who obsess over building tools that make managing your onchain domain names effortless.
Victor Zhou is a technology founder and standards editor focused on digital identity and trust. He founded Namefi, edits Ethereum Improvement Proposals, and previously led smart-contract architecture work at Google Labs.
His work sits at the intersection of naming, ownership, and the systems people use to establish identity online. That perspective makes him especially interested in the way names move between personal meaning, public recognition, and digital infrastructure.
For Namefi, Victor edits and writes about domains as durable digital identity: how names become ownable onchain assets, how tokenization changes custody and trust, and what naming can learn from the systems people use to establish identity online.