UDRP panelists. Who are the good ones?

read thru some of the cases where the decision was in favor of the domain holder

then look to see who the panelists were

imo...

Howard Neu's latest list of top 10 panelists at NAF: link

full disclosure: I don't know a UDRP from my elbow

You can really choose your panelists ?

sdsinc said:

You can really choose your panelists ?

Click to expand...

I am also surprised to hear this.

I would think that the panelists assess the disputes on a case-by-case basis, and aren't really sympathetic towards to either party.

But yeah, there are cases where the panel has made some dumb decisions in favor of the complainant which defies logic.

Since you have to submit the names of the panel, I think you need to read, and read and find similar cases to yours... then make a decision from there.

We had a few cases where it made sense to select 3-members panel, and, since we also elected to write responses ourselves, we decided to check what panelists are preferred by known lawyers that do protect domainers, such as John Berryhill. Resultingly, we won all cases - as, indeed, panelists ARE important. Less trivial thing would be how to order the list of wipo/naf suggested 5 candidates to serve as the Presiding panelist - both respondent and complainant would need to rank the 5 candidates from 1 being the most preferred candidate to 5. It is a very interesting task where some not-so-obvious criterias may sometimes be used (case-by-case basis of course).

@ecalc That's absolutely brilliant, thanks. So the NAF is the place to go if you're a complainant, it seems *eye roll*.

@biggie Yeah, that would be the idea, but of course it's time consuming. Looks like that site's done it for me (I figured someone might have done, that's why I asked ).

@sdsinc If you stick with a one member panel, the panelist is chosen at random, if the respondent goes for three, you submit names and they pick one from the names you've put and I think the 3rd panelist is chosen at random. So if you chose wisely you should be getting at least one panelist that's sympathetic to you.

Thanks guys.