richb@pioneer.ci.net writes:
Corporate entities should be *required* to register in the flat dot-com namespace, IMHO, and not be *allowed* names in any other namespace.
I like the idea of creating a new ".tm" TLD (or something less likely to conflict with a CCTLD), and requiring anybody who wants trademark protection to register there; everything else is a free-for-all, as it pretty much is now. Let them have their little trademark disputes over there, and let less litigious heads rule in the other TLDs. -----ScottG.
richb@pioneer.ci.net writes:
Corporate entities should be *required* to register in the flat dot-com namespace, IMHO, and not be *allowed* names in any other namespace.
I like the idea of creating a new ".tm" TLD (or something less likely to conflict with a CCTLD), and requiring anybody who wants trademark protection to register there; everything else is a free-for-all, as it pretty much is now. Let them have their little trademark disputes over there, and let less litigious heads rule in the other TLDs.
How do you propose to enforce this? What authority will be able to intercede in a trademark lawsuit involving a domain outside .tm, and put a stop to it? The namespace is the namespace, and infringment is infringment, whereever it occurs. If infringment occurs, the damaged party should not be prevented from seeking relief.
-----ScottG.
On Fri, 9 Mar 2001, Mike Batchelor wrote:
I like the idea of creating a new ".tm" TLD (or something less likely to conflict with a CCTLD), and requiring anybody who wants trademark protection to register there; everything else is a free-for-all, as it pretty much is now. Let them have their little trademark disputes over there, and let less litigious heads rule in the other TLDs.
How do you propose to enforce this? What authority will be able to intercede in a trademark lawsuit involving a domain outside .tm, and put a stop to it?
The namespace is the namespace, and infringment is infringment, whereever it occurs. If infringment occurs, the damaged party should not be prevented from seeking relief.
I agree. Such a policy would only serve to legitimize trademark infringement. Also, since multiple entities can, and often do, have identical trademarks in different business classes, there will still be contention for even such .tm domains. If one considers the structure of name useage, from local assumed names to registered trademarks by international organizations, the only logical conclusion is to move everything to the regional domain structure and totally do away with .com .net .org .edu and even .gov! It would seem to be the only structure compatible with all scales of naming requirements and should make domain related trademark issues a bit cleaner. Chuck
I agree. Such a policy would only serve to legitimize trademark infringement. Also, since multiple entities can, and often do, have identical trademarks in different business classes, there will still be contention for even such .tm domains. If one considers the structure of name useage, from local assumed names to registered trademarks by international organizations, the only logical conclusion is to move everything to the regional domain structure and totally do away with .com .net .org .edu and even .gov! It would seem to be the only structure compatible with all scales of naming requirements and should make domain related trademark issues a bit cleaner.
I'm partial to expanding the list of generic TLDs with a large number of short, meaningless strings, thereby allowing many identical 2nd level domains to exist while at the same time creating a daunting task for the all-your-name-are-belong-to-us crowd of squatters, lawyers and marketers. I suggest the set of A0, A1, A2 ... Z7, Z8, Z9 ... 0A, 1A, 2A ... 7Z, 8Z, 9Z. This assumes that the ISO will never issue a country code containing a digit - I don't know if that is the case. When registering a 2nd level domain, you wouldn't get to pick the top level - the registry would pick one at random for you. This would give us 520 gTLDs. Expand it to one letter and two digits for 5200. Some combinations of A-F and 0-9 would need to be excluded in order to avoid TLDs that are hex numerals, which might confuse some resolver libraries. Only purpose-specific top levels like .museum would be represented by meaningful strings. The legacy gTLDs should be deprecated and eventually retired. The ccTLDs would remain the responsibility of their associated sovereignty, and could be regional or generic in nature, however the ccTLD authority wishes to run their registry. In a nutshell, that's Mike Batchelor's Recipe for Enduring Happiness, Prosperity and Harmony for the 21st century.
Chuck
How do you propose to enforce this? What authority will be able to intercede in a trademark lawsuit involving a domain outside .tm, and put a stop to it?
The namespace is the namespace, and infringment is infringment, whereever it occurs. If infringment occurs, the damaged party should not be prevented from seeking relief.
The problem is not infringement. Obviously, if there's actual trademark infringement, it should be dealt with no matter what domain it occurs in. The problem is the exceptional protections that go way beyond traditional infringement/dilution/deception/confusion that are being granted to domain names in some TLDs. If you look at most domain disputes that have resulted in a domain being transferred, you will not see any actual confusion, deception, trademark dilution, or actual trademark infringement. What you will see is exceptional protection that goes way beyond what any court of law would give to an actual trademark. One can argue that these exceptional protections are justified because of the special nature of some TLDs. So the logical thing to do, if you don't like the exceptional protections, is to change the nature of the TLDs. That is why suggestions to change the meaning of .com or add new trademark-oriented TLDs _are_ on target. DS
* David Schwartz <davids@webmaster.com> [20010309 13:30]:
One can argue that these exceptional protections are justified because of the special nature of some TLDs. So the logical thing to do, if you don't like the exceptional protections, is to change the nature of the TLDs. That is why suggestions to change the meaning of .com or add new trademark-oriented TLDs _are_ on target.
Hence forth, the meaning of the tld '.com' has been changed. It now stands for "communist". Run! Hide your yourselves from this tld or your customers will comment on you behind your back, your children will turn you in, the government will launch DoS attacks on your network, no one will trust your SSL certs, and no one but Castro will do business with you! Wow, look at all those .com domains available. :-) </no opinion expressed or implied> -jr ---- Josh Richards [JTR38/JR539-ARIN] <jrichard@geekresearch.com/cubicle.net/fix.net/freedom.gen.ca.us> Geek Research LLC - <URL:http://www.geekresearch.com/> IP Network Engineering and Consulting
On Fri, 09 Mar 2001 13:07:15 EST, Scott Gifford said:
I like the idea of creating a new ".tm" TLD (or something less likely to conflict with a CCTLD), and requiring anybody who wants trademark protection to register there; everything else is a free-for-all, as it pretty much is now. Let them have their little trademark disputes over there, and let less litigious heads rule in the other TLDs.
Still broken. Trademarks are for use within a given business segment - that's why you can have an Apple Computer and an Apple Records - one is in the computer business, and one is in the music business. Apple Computer *did* have to promise Apple Records to never engage in the music business in order to use the trademark (this became an issue when QuickTime and other similar technologies threatened to blur the distinction). You'd need to have a .computer.tm, a .music.tm, a .automobile.tm and so on for all the categories recognized by the trademark office... -- Valdis Kletnieks Operating Systems Analyst Virginia Tech
participants (6)
-
Charles Scott -
David Schwartz -
Josh Richards -
Mike Batchelor -
Scott Gifford -
Valdis.Kletnieks＠vt.edu