AUCKLAND, New Zealand -- Seattle's OneWorld Challenge escaped disqualification from the America's Cup when an arbitration panel could not clearly establish that the syndicate used secret designs by a rival.

The panel released its full report Sunday, accepting OneWorld's own evidence that it possessed prohibited design information -- more than it had revealed at a previous hearing.

But the panel could not prove OneWorld used the data. Had the panel been able to, OneWorld would have faced the automatic disqualification.

OneWorld trails Oracle of San Francisco 3 to minus-1 in the best-of-seven semifinal repechage.

On Dec. 9, the panel penalized OneWorld a point in each of the remaining rounds of the America's Cup. It found one of its designers, Ian Mitchell, possessed and later destroyed secret design data belonging to Team New Zealand.

The panel threw out accusations made against OneWorld by New York and Italian challengers, refusing to accept the uncorroborated testimony of key witness Sean Reeves.

The panel said OneWorld admitted it failed to make full disclosure of the design information at an earlier hearing.

The panel said the offenses revealed by OneWorld would not have come to light without the team's voluntary disclosures and said that mitigated the seriousness of the violation.

"In determining the penalty to be imposed, the panel has considered the gravity of the breach and the unfair advantage that it could have procured to OneWorld over the other participants throughout each series of the races," the ruling said.

In another matter, OneWorld said it would not ask the arbitration panel to investigate alleged rule infractions by the Oracle team.

OneWorld had asked its lawyers to examine documents that appeared to show Oracle obtained prohibited design data when it bought assets belonging to 2000 Cup challenger AmericaOne.

After speaking with an Oracle attorney on Sunday, OneWorld chief executive Gary Wright decided the case would not be pursued.