• To resolve disputes and conflicts occured in cyberspace by the methods such as online negotiaion, mediation, or arbitration.Abbreviation of Online Dispute Resolution.
• To resolve disputes and conflicts occured in the real world using online communication methods such as e-mails, chat, or TV conferences。
• To prevent these disputes and conflicts online.
• The main advantages of ODR are: to reduce cost and time for resolution; to correspond to complex cross border disputes.
Not all conflicts are appropriate for ODR process and this can be said the same about the court cases. Here are examples of cases which are suitable for ODR. Because ODR is a new emerging process, there are not much data of its prices, but it is said ODR will definitely be cheaper than ADR mediation process. According to the Zuckerman"sreport, the cost of a hypothetical two-party construction dispute will cost about $120,000 when resovled in litigation. The arbitration will cost about $95,000 while mediation costs only about $10,000. Mediation is clearly the best choice, but ODR can further reduce the costs from that.
The cases which should not be solved through ODR process are criminal and violence related cases, when a party has mental problems, and when a party is not willing to solve a case by ODR.
• Business Troubles：
Small and Medium-sized business which do not have subsidiaries can benefit from ODR process. When they encounter troubles away from their offices, they have to send people or find lawyers in other areas. The legalfee will be added to the travel and accomodation costs. In addition, loss of time is inevitable. ODR aims to solve online which can minimize the traveling and time costs.
It is said that Fortune 500 companies spend total $210 billion for litigation and three years for each case. According to the 2005resource, arbitration will cost for a case of 1 million dispute. It supposed to take a one week for Tribunal procedural matters and another week for the hearing. In addition 20 hours of administrative time will be needed to deal with the case. Then the cost will be anywhere between $120,000-200,000. An average arbitrator's compensation seems to be $2,200 per day. Arbitrations are still expensive.
eDiscovery will be discussed later in the IP section, but the current trend is to submit all the electronic data to courts as evidence. It seems easy, but it takes tremendous amount of time to prepare such documents. The bigger the size of your company, it needs to spend more time on eDiscovery, because it has huge numbers of internal electronic memos and emails. Sometimes emails are copied to a number of people or electronic documents are circulated among people in purpose of editing.The Zubulake v. UBS Warburgcase of the US was just another employemnt discrimination case. In 2005, eDiscovery was still new, but a judge concluded that UBS purposefully destroyed the electronic information despite court orders. Thus, the missing documents were treated as though they were the evidences against UBS. The three years long case finished as UBS was asked to pay a great amount of damages. Whether UBS purposefully did not comply with the court orders or UBS did not have an appropriate method of electronic file management was unknown, but this case became one of the precedents of eDiscovery.
In case of a joint venture with an organization from different countries, it is common to have disagreements on a provision for dispute resolution. It is reasonable that each party wants to comply with its own country's law and nobody wants to travel to other country to be contested with different languages. These is the type of cases where ODR would work perfectly.
Contrary to litigation, ODR gives options to the parties who do not have ot prove their positions. They are encouraged to communicate and move towards resolutions. eDiscovery can be eliminated once parties agree to such a term. But for online arbitration, parties need to reason an arbitrator by demonstrating evidences. It would not be wise, not demonstrating electronic documents before agreeing with the other side to eliminate such evidence in the process.
• Divorce and Child Custody：
According to a Australia Daily Telegraph article of May 22, 2006, "When Love Goes", the number of divorce has been increasing. About 20% of newly weds divorce within 5 years and more than 33% of marriages end up in divorce within 20years. In Australia, a solicitor's minimum fee is about A$180 per hour and a counsel cost about A$200-300 per hour. The appearances to a court costs between about $1500-2200 per day. Divorce cases are further complicated by state regulatory laws in the US> It takes time to settle because details of child custody have to be clarified. If they are living close by, it may be easier to divide such works, but if one of them moves to other state, it makes harder to decide. Many of the times, couples can not move out of the state until the divorce is settled. The cost of litigation includes not only the counselling fee, the hourly charges for the preparation fo documents and filing fees. In the US, an attorney for divorce costs around $350 per hour. It depends on a case, but a simple case can cost from $10,000 for two parties and a complicated case with children and assets can cost $220,000. A mediator charges between $150-310 per hour. ODR can help these couples who live far and ease the process of deciding child custody without meeting face to face. ODR would work for international divorce cases when a party goes back to his or her home country. It would be easier for parties to communicate online.
• International Sports Conflicts:
This area is already adopting ADR. Especially the sports having judges in grading, such as gymnastics or figure skating can be influenced by values of individual judge. There is no definite line for the decision and ADR can facilitate the process of conflict resolution. There are many athletes who are active internationally and ODR can ease the process of ADR by using online communication.
World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) adopts ODR to solve domain name conflicts over the internet. FIFA, for example, solved the case quickly over the internet of the trade mark "world cup" in 13 domain names of other sites. Nike and UEFA also solved similar problems over the internet. ODR has already been adopted successfully.
• IP-realted Cases
IP cases are becoming borderless and their future depend on which countries' law are based upon. If the litigation is conducted in the US, conducted in the US, a jury decides the validity and most of them may not have college degree or a educational background in technological backgournds. In addition, the US patent litigation is very expensive. The cost increased sharply. It was about $3 million in 2001, then to $4 million in 2003, $4.5 million in 2005, and to $5 million in 2007. There is a rule that attorney fees are not awarded to a winning side. So one has to keep in mind before start a process. By the way, more than 2500 IP cases are filed in the US it can take two years to file a case for a trial.
eDiscovery is required in these cases. Parties need to go back to old electronically stored information to fulfill orders of court. It is very time consuming to retrieve the appropriate information and increases the cost of counsels of legal departments and attorneys' fees. E-discovery is an current trend and ODR can eliminate eDiscovery requirements and other types of binding rules in order to ease the process and thus reduces time and costs.