Re: trademark law

[Michael Dillon <michael@memra.com>]

On Wed, 11 Dec 1996, Net Sales wrote:

> as the saying goes, your mission, should you decide to accept it, is to
> develop a naming scheme that protects users, WHILE complying with current
> law. 

There is no current law regarding domain names.

> or circumvent world courts.  i can't imagine it's impossible to develop
> standards that are in compliance with existing law; trademark law isn't
> that hard, and isn't that unfair.

Trademark law isn't terribly relevant to the DNS system.

DNS is a means whereby a person or organization can publish a directory of
names and IP addresses that can be used to reach their computers. A
registry is a third party organization that facilitates the publication
of this directory by maintaining a public directory of domain names, their
owners and the IP addresses of their nameservers where the organization
publishes its own directory. So a registry is basically a directory of
directories. I can see no good reason why a registry should be involved in
the enforcement of trademark laws in any way except one. That one item is
that a registry should be required to obtain and publish the legal address
of any domain name owner using the registry. This basically means that
a registry should not accept PO Box addresses.

Every country already has an existing set of laws that deal with
trademarks and an existing legal structure to deal with trademark
disputes. I can see no reason to change this nor can I see any way in
which the DNS system can significantly influence the courts in these
matters.

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