Arbitration (RE: [wg-b] food for thought)

[Harald Tveit Alvestrand <Harald@alvestrand.no>]

At 09:17 23.09.99 -0700, Roeland M.J. Meyer wrote:
>I believe
>that you've strengthend the resolve of many, that arbitration,
>especially mandatory arbitration, is a "bad thing".

note: I had to have lessons during the WIPO process in the meaning of the 
word "arbitration".
According to what I understood, an arbitration process is binding on the 
participants - they can't go to court if they feel unfairly treated 
(slightly variant across jurisdictions, but that's the gist of it).
A mediation process is "just someone helping you talk to each other", while 
the proposed dispute resolution process is somewhere in between - sort of 
like a pretrial court with the power to grant limited interim relief, where 
the parties have the option of either accepting the judgment or taking the 
dispute to court afterwards.

I think you will find lots of people agreeing with you that mandatory 
arbitration (as described above) is a Bad Thing, which is why mandatory 
arbitration is NOT being considered for the Dispute Resolution Process.

Disclaimer: I report only on my understanding. This may or may not have a 
relationship to facts.

                   Harald A


--
Harald Tveit Alvestrand, Maxware, Norway
Harald.Alvestrand@maxware.no