----- Original Message -----
From: "Owen DeLong" <owen@delong.com>
MacDonald's would likely get title to .macdonalds under the new rules, right?
Well... Which MacDonald's?
1. The fast food chain 2. O.C. MacDonald's Plumbing Supply 3. MacDonald and Sons Paving Systems 4. MacDonald and Madison Supply Company 5. etc.
All of them have legitimate non-conflicting trademarks on the name MacDonald's (or at least could, I admit I made some of them up). I said when this mess first started that mapping trademarks to DNS would only lead to dysfunction. It did. Now the dysfunction is becoming all-encompassing. It will be interesting to watch the worlds IP lawyers (IP as in Intellectual Property, not Internet Protocol) eat their young over these issues for the next several decades.
Indeed. It's actually "McDonalds", of course, and the US trademark law system has a provision for "famous" marks. I don't recall what the rules are, but once they've decide your mark is "famous", then it no longer competes only in its own line-of-business category; *no one* can register a new mark in any category using your word. Coca-Cola, Sony, and I think Kodak, are the canonical examples of a famous mark. http://www.quizlaw.com/trademarks/what_is_a_famous_trademark.php Cheers, -- jra -- Jay R. Ashworth Baylink jra@baylink.com Designer The Things I Think RFC 2100 Ashworth & Associates http://baylink.pitas.com 2000 Land Rover DII St Petersburg FL USA http://photo.imageinc.us +1 727 647 1274