Zbynek Loebl's blog

I wrote in this blog some time ago about the consultation and pilot we have been organizing on the proposed ODR Exchange. Now the first results are emerging.

Dear participants and possible participants of ODR Forum, please start sending us your conference papers and presentations. We will be happy to publish your contributions on this website. We are very happy that there is such a big interest in ODR Forum and we look forward very much to your/our discussions, brainstormings and presentations.

I am glad to briefly update you about the cross-border ODR Pilot I have been coordinating. As you know, we have announced it in Vienna at the last Working Group meeting and we launched it in January. At the moment we have participants from the following countries (the list of participants is available at www.odrexchange.com): Belgium, Canada, Croatia, Czech Republic, Germany, Hong-Kong, Hungary, Ireland, Korea, Latin America, Sweden, The Netherlands, UK and USA.

As part of the current discussions  on cross-border UNCITRAL ODR Rules for low value high volume e-commerce cases I have read research prepared by several top experts on international private law on various existing types of legal approaches to issues of validity of pre-dispute arbitration agreements in B-C cases in international settings. Legislative solutions vary significantly across the globe and national courts also apply various approaches to this issue.

Many of you now plan your participation of ODR Forum in Prague from Wednesday 27 June to Friday 29 June. You might consider attending an ICANN meeting in the first half of the same week (ICANN meeting will be held in Prague from Sunday 24 June to Friday 29 June). Attendance of the ICANN meeting is free of charge. ICANN meeting in Prague will be interesting mainly because it will be the first meeting after the end of time window for filing applications for new top-level domains (new gTLDs).

Please find below a list of 10 issues which in my view describe how the future cross-border ODR system should look like in order to be fair for buyers (especially consumers) and sellers and at the same time workable in practice. All these issues have been discussed at various fora. It is certain that there are potential risks associated with any global online system and cross-border ODR is by no means an exception. We need to identify all such potential risks and discuss publicly the best available resolutions. The following are in my view  the ten basic issues:

Last week I participated in a public meeting organized by US administration in Washington DC on cross-border ODR, UNCITRAL process and the ODR Exchange pilot I have been coordinating. The discussion was accessible online as well.

Tentative programme of the ODR Forum in Prague has been posted on this website under Agenda. We believe the programme is exciting, it should combine presentation of new ideas and concepts with a lot of discussion. We hope it will be fun for all of us who will participate at this venue. The programme is not yet final (although it is almost final) and if you have any suggestions or proposals or corrections please email me at zloebl@odrexchange.com.

The following drafts were just distributed to the participants of the cross-border ODR pilot:

-          ECRI ODR communication standard; and

-          Principles of user interface of ODR Exchange

New year 2012 promises to be quite active year for online dispute resolution. Several significant international initiatives in ODR should achieve their first material outcomes next year. It is possible and desirable that UNCITRAL WG III comes to a rough consensus on the draft ODR Rules for cross-border low value high volume e-commerce disputes, both B-C and B-B and also on minimum prescribed criteria for ODR providers and neutrals.