Editorial

摘要

This issue of the Journal provides an array of articles spanning an empirical study of Australian domain name panel decisions, an exploration of the patents/competition law interface in the pharmaceutical sector and an inquiry, in the context of one of Australia's more famous trade marks, of the scope of expressive freedoms. Andrew Christie, James Gloster and Sarah Goddard present their empirical study of 470 Australian domain name dispute decisions that span the period from 2002 to 2017. The analysis of this data reveals that case outcomes are ostensibly connected to substantive rather than idiosyncratic factors. Thus matters such as whether the complaint is based solely on a trade mark rather than on a name alone or together with a trade mark, or on a registered rather than an unregistered trade mark, or that the complaint is not defended by the respondent, are all statistically associated with case disposition. Conversely, matters such as which forum or panellist undertook the arbitral resolution are not statistically associated with outcomes. This should provide both greater comfort about the workings of the system as a whole, while also offering to parties who are in a domain name dispute insight into the factors that, at least statistically in the time period under study, have had weight.