Re: (Original) Conflict resolution revisited

[Dave Crocker <dcrocker@imc.org>]

At 12:09 AM -0800 11/20/96, Gert Blij wrote:
>simply fail to grasp that the majority of societies outside the US are a)
>not as "lawyer centric" :-) as the US  and b) that it is virtually
>impossible for people residing in other nations to partake in this US based
>legal bun fight.

	My own, non-lawyer assessment to the various lines of commentary is
that this is all impressively complicated, difficult, frustrating, and
tenacious.  Not a good combination.  Added to this is the fact that the
relevant courts are national but the DNS is international.

>1	Let's try to continue along the lines of the idea posted by the
>lady from
>Paris (I forgot her name (sorry :-( ) but do remember she was born in
>Poland). The gist was that a legal entity should be created that would have

	I'm told by some folk involved in the task of developing
international trademark law that the subject has been actively worked on
for about 100 years.  Bottom line summary is that there is no international
trademark law yet, so I think it's reasonable to be less than sanguine
about the likelihood for an immediate resolution.  That doesn't mean it
won't happen or that it won't happen quickly, but being good engineers, we
try to design for likely outcomes.

	Hence, I think that inventing international legal constructs or
processes is appealing, but only for the long-term.

>2	There will always be the problem whether apple.com should be
>allocated to
>Apple Computers or the International Apple Growers Association since both
>of them would have the word "apple" in their trademark, but to discourage
>the greedy/not so honest operators, why not prevent any one person/entity

	The nice thing about having multiple registries is that it becomes
possible to defer dictating behaviors in these sorts of matters.  If there
are enough registries to constitute real competition, then they can choose
their own, various policies and rules and "the market" will select the more
acceptable ones.

	It seems currently inevitable that the base of operations for a
registry determines the national court under which it is subject.  If we
have multiple registries, there is incentive for ensuring that they are
sprinkled around the globe, to afford users a range of jurisdictions.

d/


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Dave Crocker, Director                                       +1 408 246 8253
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Also:  IAHC member, expressing personal opinions