ICANN has announced that a revision of its UDRP will take effect as of 1 March 2010. From the official statement:

On 30 October 2009, the ICANN Board approved a modification to the Implementation Rules for the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (“Rules”). The modified Rules now require UDRP claimants and respondents to provide documents to UDRP Providers in electronic form. The modified Rules also change UDRP Provider obligations in forwarding hard copy notice to respondents in UDRP proceedings: the original Rules required Providers to forward a hard copy of the UDRP complaint; under the new Rules, Providers do not have to forward a hard copy of the entire complaint. Providers are now only required to forward a hard copy notice that a UDRP complaint has been filed.

The modified Rules will become mandatory for all UDRP proceedings filed on or after 1 March 2010

More here.  According to the WIPO, this move will save at least a million pages of paper per year for the complaints filed with the WIPO Arbitration and Mediation Center alone, equivalent to about 1,000 trees (see CORRIGENDUM). Good news!

CORRIGENDUM: According to WIPO, some ten million pages of paper were filed over the lifespan of the UDRP (the last nine years) with WIPO, equivalent to about 1,000 trees. Some research on the Internet puts this number into doubt: apparently, one pine tree of the kind typically used for paper production produces about 80,000 pages of paper. Dividing ten million by 80,000 gets you a 125, not a 1,000 trees. WIPO may be slightly overstating its case.

Image from H. Koppdelaney, Creative Commons licensed.