Press

Berlin, in January 2003

The International Online Arbitration Court

It may not be ignored: the US has a lead with International Online Arbitration Courts. The Europeans must do something to draw near. Quite a number of Online Arbitration Courts are presently operating already in the US. To name an example: just see the BBB (r) (Better Business Bureau), its proposals in the "dispute resolution" sector. Sefirot is carefully evaluating ideas, business models, marketing methods and court sequences. As the evaluation shows the idea of Online Arbitration Courts may not be transferred to Europe in a simple US analogous fashion. It is never the less possible to establish economically successful Online Arbitration Courts in Europe. New ways, however, must be sought and identified to copy the American success story for the European theatre.
European legal/technical particularities have the effect that American models cannot simply be taken over in Europe. These particularities will cause special requirements for the workflow system of a European Online Arbitration Court. Subsequent some of those European peculiarities which have to be taken into consideration in the context of an International Online Arbitration Court:
	It will be necessary to create a multiple language system different from the US paradigm - in view of the number of "linguae francae" in Europe. Just to allow one language for the International Online Arbitration Court is no meaningful option. The Online Arbitration Court would not be acceptable for a participant with a different language; an International Online Arbitration Court would have to face the critique not to take proper legal note of his statements. This is a firm general legal principle for court proceedings; violation could result in cancellation of an arbitrement by a regular state-run court (§ 1059 Abs. 1, Abs. 2 Nr. 1 d) ZPO).
	An "Agreement to Arbitrate" concluded between parties in order to have a conflict resolved by an arbitration court is a prerequisite for an arbitration procedure. German law has established conditions for the validity of arbitration agreements including consumers, namely mandating the employment of qualified electronic signatures (§ 2 Ziff. 3 SigG2). The community of European states is bound by special law containing the high requirements w.r.t electronic signatures (for Germany SigG, SigV). Comparable law does not exist in the US, therefore such procedures are not customary with their Online Arbitration Courts. The law is, however, binding for the International Online Arbitration Court.
	It is common law practice in America to permit parties to include separate witnesses and official experts in negotiations and to hear them without further ado. German law does not permit this; this conclusion has been derived from § 1042 Abs. 4 S. 2 ZPO stating that the arbitration court is entitled to rule if hearing of evidence is admissible, to execute it and to independently qualify the result. German law permits the arbiter to carry out consistency checks w.r.t evidence. This establishes an obligation for the arbiter to investigate if he wants to avoid the risk that an ordinary court cancels his judgment. All relevant evidence has to be inspected according to the hearing obligation; this has to be taken into consideration at the International Online Arbitration Court procedures.
	In the US there exist here and there area-specific law (e.g. Video Protection Act); aside from these there is neither universal legal data protection nor measurable government control of events with data protection relevance. Confidence is vested in voluntary self-regulation of companies. EU members, however, have established manifold data protection regulations with multiple, far-reaching obligations (e.g. Informationspflichten, organisatorische und technische Anforderungen z.B. aus § 4 Abs. 4 S. 1 Ziff. 1.- 6. TDDSG pp). Different from the US such legal requirements are enforcing implementation of work sequences and securing actions non-the least by the power of sanctions in case of disregard.
Status: the Sefirot project team working on the Online Arbitration Court introduction has thoroughly identified such obstacles and has removed the step by step while realizing the court system. It will last only a short while that the first International Online Arbitration Court becomes active and will work successfully in the European theatre following the positive US example.