Verio applies for trademark on the term "whois" (fwd)
food for thought.
From: Bill Gerrard Subject: Verio applies for trademark on the term "whois"
Hello,
I just ran across this in the PTO trademark database...
Word Mark WHOIS Owner Name (APPLICANT) Verio Inc. Owner Address 8005 S. Chester St., Suite 200 Englewood COLORADO 80112 CORPORATION DELAWARE Attorney of Record GLEN K. BEATON Serial Number 75-742043 Filing Date 07/01/1999 Mark Drawing Code (1) TYPED DRAWING Register PRINCIPAL Type of Mark SERVICE MARK
International Class 042
Goods and Services
Computer services, namely, providing a computer database in the field of personal and commercial address and telephone directory information and other directory resources available on global information networks and providing search services in connection therewith; DATE OF FIRST USE: 1997.03.15; DATE OF FIRST USE IN COMMERCE: 1997.03.15
On Thu, 3 Feb 2000 bmanning@vacation.karoshi.com wrote:
Owner Name (APPLICANT) Verio Inc. Owner Address 8005 S. Chester St., Suite 200 Englewood COLORADO 80112 CORPORATION DELAWARE Attorney of Record GLEN K. BEATON Serial Number 75-742043 Filing Date 07/01/1999 Mark Drawing Code (1) TYPED DRAWING Register PRINCIPAL Type of Mark SERVICE MARK
go to http://tarr.uspto.gov/index.html Current Status: A non-final action has been mailed. This is a letter from the examining attorney requesting additional information and/or making an initial refusal. However, no final determination as to the registrability of the mark has been made. It seems we all need to file with the PTO and let them know that whois has long been in use before Verio. Christian
However, there is a significant difference between a trademark, and a service mark. On Thu, 3 Feb 2000 bmanning@vacation.karoshi.com wrote:
food for thought.
From: Bill Gerrard Subject: Verio applies for trademark on the term "whois"
Hello,
I just ran across this in the PTO trademark database...
Word Mark WHOIS Owner Name (APPLICANT) Verio Inc. Owner Address 8005 S. Chester St., Suite 200 Englewood COLORADO 80112 CORPORATION DELAWARE Attorney of Record GLEN K. BEATON Serial Number 75-742043 Filing Date 07/01/1999 Mark Drawing Code (1) TYPED DRAWING Register PRINCIPAL Type of Mark SERVICE MARK
International Class 042
Goods and Services
Computer services, namely, providing a computer database in the field of personal and commercial address and telephone directory information and other directory resources available on global information networks and providing search services in connection therewith; DATE OF FIRST USE: 1997.03.15; DATE OF FIRST USE IN COMMERCE: 1997.03.15
On Thu, 3 Feb 2000 bmanning@vacation.karoshi.com wrote:
Word Mark WHOIS Owner Name (APPLICANT) Verio Inc. Owner Address 8005 S. Chester St., Suite 200 Englewood COLORADO 80112 CORPORATION DELAWARE Attorney of Record GLEN K. BEATON Serial Number 75-742043 Filing Date 07/01/1999 Mark Drawing Code (1) TYPED DRAWING Register PRINCIPAL Type of Mark SERVICE MARK
International Class 042
Goods and Services
Computer services, namely, providing a computer database in the field of personal and commercial address and telephone directory information and other directory resources available on global information networks and providing search services in connection therewith; DATE OF FIRST USE: 1997.03.15; DATE OF FIRST USE IN COMMERCE: 1997.03.15
I wonder what Stan Barber has to say about this, since he's Director of Technical Operations at Verio. It seems rather foolish to try and register it as a trademark since whois servers have been around much longer than 3.15.1997, and certainly used in commercial activities when NetSol started charging for domain registrations well before then. As far as I can tell, WHOIS first appears back in RFC812 from March 1, 1982, and is defined again in RFC954 in 1985. I've taken the liberty of cc'ing Stan, since I'm not sure if he still participates on NANOG or not. Hopefully this is just a silly mistake of some sort and won't smack of the Linux trademark case. -- Joseph W. Shaw - jshaw@insync.net Computer Security Consultant and Programmer Free UNIX advocate - "I hack, therefore I am."
Looks like this thread has moved to /. -ls- Joe Shaw <jshaw@insync.net> wrote:
On Thu, 3 Feb 2000 bmanning@vacation.karoshi.com wrote:
Word Mark WHOIS Owner Name (APPLICANT) Verio Inc. Owner Address 8005 S. Chester St., Suite 200 Englewood COLORADO 80112 CORPORATION DELAWARE Attorney of Record GLEN K. BEATON Serial Number 75-742043 Filing Date 07/01/1999 Mark Drawing Code (1) TYPED DRAWING Register PRINCIPAL Type of Mark SERVICE MARK
International Class 042
Goods and Services
Computer services, namely, providing a computer database in the field of personal and commercial address and telephone directory information and other directory resources available on global information networks and providing search services in connection therewith; DATE OF FIRST USE: 1997.03.15; DATE OF FIRST USE IN COMMERCE: 1997.03.15
I wonder what Stan Barber has to say about this, since he's Director of Technical Operations at Verio. It seems rather foolish to try and register it as a trademark since whois servers have been around much longer than 3.15.1997, and certainly used in commercial activities when NetSol started charging for domain registrations well before then. As far as I can tell, WHOIS first appears back in RFC812 from March 1, 1982, and is defined again in RFC954 in 1985.
I've taken the liberty of cc'ing Stan, since I'm not sure if he still participates on NANOG or not. Hopefully this is just a silly mistake of some sort and won't smack of the Linux trademark case.
-- Joseph W. Shaw - jshaw@insync.net Computer Security Consultant and Programmer Free UNIX advocate - "I hack, therefore I am."
participants (5)
-
Alex Rubenstein -
bmanning＠vacation.karoshi.com -
Christian Nielsen -
Joe Shaw -
Larry Snyder