[iplaw]

Binding arbitration has its place. Look at the binding arbitration decision between Qualcomm and Blackberry, which is resulting in Blackberry receiving an $815,000,000 refund from Qualcomm after a royalty dispute involving licensed standard essential patents.

Because it was binding arbitration and not traditional court proceedings, this judgment is not appealable. This compressed what would have been a 10-year drawn out and extremely costly process into five days. That's it!

There are more arguments against binding arbitration when it's an individual against a conglomerate - you get a biased arbitrator and you're sunk with no means of redress.

[kyrra]

0) You can appeal arbitration awards within the arbitration company[0].

1) You can appeal arbitration rulings to the court system for a subset of situations (like misconduct or fraud by the arbiters)[1].

[0] http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:VjU7-9v...

[1] https://apps.americanbar.org/litigation/committees/adr/artic...