Expedited Arbitration Rules: Stockholm and WIPO

Abstract

COMMERCIAL DISPUTES are frequently resolved by arbitration, which is intended to provide a quicker and cheaper way of settling disputes than resorting to litigation. Substantial effort has been devoted to the creation of satisfactory systems of arbitration. Nevertheless, in recent years arbitral proceedings have been criticized for becoming bogged down in costly and time-consuming court-like procedures. In the light of such reactions, new dispute resolution procedures have been attempted. On 1 July 1995, the Arbitration Institute of the Stockholm Chamber of Commerce (SCC) introduced rules providing for a simplified form of arbitral proceedings (‘SCC Expedited Rules’). The purpose of the new SCC regime is to provide an inexpensive and more expeditious means of conflict resolution.1 The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) Arbitration Centre (‘the WIPO Centre’), located in Geneva, administers a number of procedures for the resolution of international commercial disputes, the subject matter of which is intellectual property. On 1 October 1994 the WIPO Arbitration Centre adopted rules (‘WIPO Expedited Rules’) whose objectives are the same as those of the SCC Expedited Rules. Both regimes (together referred to as ‘the Expedited Rules’) are offered as an alternative to the standard arbitration rules of the SCC and the WIPO. Most disputes are submitted for arbitration pursuant to an arbitration clause contained in a contract. The parties concerned would then choose the set of rules they wished to apply by a provision in their contract stating that all or some categories of disputes should be subject to the Expedited Rules; the parties may, of course, agree to submit their dispute to arbitration in accordance with the Expedited Rules once a dispute has arisen. It is worth emphasizing that for the application of either set of Expedited Rules there is no threshold in respect of the sum in dispute. In the …