GENEVA, Feb. 18 (Xinhuanet) -- The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) announced Friday that it received 1.179 cases of abusive registration of trademarks as domain names, or cybersquatting, in 2004.

    It is a 6.6 percent increase over the number received the previous year, WIPO said in a press release.

    WIPO's Arbitration and Mediation Center has handled a total of over 7,000 disputes, involving parties from 124 countries and covering over 12,500 domain names since the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP) -- a quick and cost effective dispute resolution procedure -- went into effect in December 1999.

    The UDRP, which was proposed by WIPO and has become accepted asan international standard for resolving domain name disputes, is designed specifically to discourage and resolve the abusive registration of trademarks as domain names.

    Francis Gurry, deputy director general of WIPO who oversees thework of the Center, noted in a statement that "the UDRP has been highly successful in creating a deterrent effect as well as in providing trademark owners with an effective international remedy against cybersquatting."

    He also stressed that there was still bad faith associated withthe practice of cybersquatting as over 80 percent of the WIPO expert decisions have gone in favor of the trademark holder, be ita large multinational corporation or a small or medium-sized business. Enditem