Some of these institutions and centers aim to function as the official tribunal for dispute resolution of some very specific markets on the Internet. But others have a more general character, working as institutions for dispute resolution of any kind of private parties that have a trade dispute both at the national and at the international level. Their main intention in both cases is to provide services that facilitate the filing of claims and responses through online means. The following are but some examples of those institutions, centers and websites where you can go when you need to resolve an online dispute.
Indeed one of the most important institutions and centers for online dispute resolution is the World Intellectual Property Organization Arbitration and Mediation Centre (WIPO). It is a provider of dispute resolution, but also a very important source of information to understand how online dispute resolution works. You can visit its website for more information: www.wipo.int/portal/en/index.html.
ADR Forum
Another important place where you can go to resolve online disputes is the ADR Forum, formerly known as the National Arbitration Forum. It was established in 1986, and it is also a provider of dispute resolution and an important source of information for online dispute resolution. It offers services of arbitration (business to business, intellectual property, franchise, employment), mediation (general, intellectual property, franchise), and domain dispute (UDRP, URS, ccTLDs, gTLDs, registry specific, third level). You can visit its website for more information: www.adrforum.com/Home/HomePage.
The Online Dispute Resolution Platform is the official website managed by the European Commission to resolve disputes in the European Union. It works both with consumers and with traders as a neutral third party. In this sense, it can be used to make complaints about goods and services bought online in the European Union. The main idea is that if a customer or a trader has a complaint about a purchase made online, they can decide not to go to court, but rather have the chance to resolve the dispute online, reaching an out-of-court settlement. You can visit its website for more information here:
webgate.ec.europa.eu/odr/main/index.cfm?event=main.home.chooseLanguage.
Nominet
Nominet is the place in charge of the official registry of domain names in the United Kingdom, including domain information for .uk, .co.uk, .org.uk, .me.uk, .sch.uk, .plc.uk, .ltd.uk, .cymru and .wales sites. Nominet offers several services, and one of them is the resolution of domain disputes in the United Kingdom through an award-winning Dispute Resolution Service that has five stages: submission of the complaint and the response about it, a process of mediation, a decision reached by experts on the dispute, an appeal, and the closure of the domain dispute. You can visit its website for more information: www.nominet.uk.