Re: New TLDs and Registry charters

[Michael Dillon <michael@memra.com>]

On Sat, 7 Dec 1996, Net Sales wrote:

> nobody can stop you from referring privately to a paper tissue as a
> 'kleenex', but whenever you say it publicly, whether commerically or not,
> you can expect to hear from the 'kleenex' police.  all trademarks stand the
> chance of being removed if not enforced, or becoming generic.  use the word
> kleenex, and you will hear from them.  are you violating the law?  they'll
> want a court to decide.  as their lawyer (and i'm not a lawyer), i'd argue
> that you used a commercial medium (the internet) inappropriately and demand
> whateverthehell lawyers demand in this situation.

And I'd stand there with no lawyer an demonstrate that the Internet is
*NOT* a commercial medium. If I lost there would be so much negative
publicity to whoever owns this kleenex trademark that they would wish they
had the sense to leave me alone. Tha fact is that where I come from,
"kleenex" is a generaic term used by people to refer to any sort of paper
tissue including toilet paper and sometimes even paper towels.

The DNS namespace is *NOT* a commercial namespace. It is a generic
universal namespace just like the namespace of all people's names or all
street names or all city/town/village names. 

Michael Dillon                   -               Internet & ISP Consulting
Memra Software Inc.              -                  Fax: +1-604-546-3049
http://www.memra.com             -               E-mail: michael@memra.com