The World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) will be organising and holding an arbitration workshop (WIPO Arbitration Workshop) in Seoul, Republic of Korea on 10 and 11 October 2013.

As WIPO notes, “intellectual property has become an essential business asset as well as a means of creating value“. In this respect, “arbitration, as a private and confidential procedure, is increasingly being used to resolve disputes involving intellectual property rights, especially when involving parties from different jurisdictions. Intellectual property and technology disputes have a number of particular characteristics that may be better addressed by arbitration than by court litigation“.

The WIPO Arbitration Workshop is intended to “provide intensive basic training of a practical nature for party representatives in arbitration and for arbitrators” with a focus on the WIPO Arbitration and WIPO Expedited Arbitration Rules (as well as the WIPO Expert Determination Rules) in intellectual property and technology disputes.

The Program for the WIPO Arbitration Workshop will consist of nine sessions devoted to the following subjects:

• Recent Developments in International Arbitration
• Arbitration of Intellectual Property Disputes
• Selection and Appointment of the Tribunal
• Preparatory Organization
• Interim Relief
• Exchange of Memorials and Documents
• Hearings and Evidence: Managing the Process
• Awards
• Drafting Dispute Resolution Clauses

More details of the event as well as the faculty for the workshops can be found here.

The WIPO Arbitration Workshop is particularly timely, given the findings in WIPO’s recent International Survey on Dispute Resolution in Technology Transactions. For more, see our post on the WIPO survey here.