WIPO has sent a letter to ICANN to “seriously consider moving towards an essentially paperless UDRP”. Here are some interesting stats that appear in the letter:

• Over the lifespan of the UDRP, the total number of pages filed with WIPO alone is estimated at some ten million (roughly equivalent to over one thousand trees).

• The approximate number of paper pages from Respondents is over 300,000.

The letter outlines a number of reasons including:

1. Environmentally friendly
2. Efficient – leading to cost savings
3. Most already file electronically anyway
4. 4% email bounce back in 2008
5. The average time that elapsed between WIPO’s receipt of the electronic Compalint and its receipt of the hard copies was four days. “A delay in receipt of a Response in hard copy may also delay the Panel’s review of the complete record“.

I think this is a great move. Although I’m not surprised that its WIPO taking the initiative to suggest an improvement to an ICANN process. It just goes to show how inefficient ICANN is.

Although this week I did have similar, strange technology interactions with two companies:

1. Company A – a webhost asked me to print out, scan in and email them a copy of an invoice that I received via email. Apparently their process said that email (text) wasn’t good enough.
2. Company B – asked me to email them, post a hardcopy and fax them the same document.

Its 2009 and we are still using fax machines and printing stuff out – unbelievable. Shouldn’t we all have jet-packs by now?