Re: Responses to Responses

[rick@yujean.com (Net Sales)]

Michael Dillon <michael@memra.com> writes:

>Domain names identify a computer or a group of computers managed by a
>single authority, not a product or service or company.

sounds like mis-appropriation of trademark; however, i think your basic
argument is flawed.

>I would type in Toyota and the search engine would provide me every web
>page in its index that includes the word "Toyota". If The Toyota Motor
>Sales USA had their website at http://www.websites.com/tms/ then it would
>still come up in the web search. The domain name of the site has no effect
>on the search. And if the Toyota Dealers Association wants to register the
>name toyota.dealers.ent then why not? And if Toyota owners want to
>register the domain toyota.sucks.alt because they are having problems with
>their cars, then why not? If Yoshi Toyota runs a Sushi bar in New York
>called Toyota's Sushi Bar the why should he not register
>toyota.new-york.ny.us and if the word Toyota is Korean for "my pleasure"
>then why couldn't someone register toyota.kamsa.alt for their personal
>home page? If Toyota the car company feels this could confuse their
>customers then they can go to court. But they have to weigh the possible
>confusion against the negative publicity that they will generate by suing.
>There is already an Internet cultural habit developping whereby if your
>website can be easily confused with someone else's you put a link on your
>home page to the other site to make things clearer. I first ran across
>this at http://www.apache.com over a year ago and I wouldn't be surprised
>for a court to some day find this sort of link to be sufficient to avoid
>litigation for trademark infringement in most cases.

michael, so if i'm hungry, i can enter your house and take bread; illegal
tho that is (and we're discussing law, not morals), you'd weigh the benefit
of negative publicity against calling the police.  gee, my non-profit group
that feeds people needs more computers to manage the feeding times.  i
guess i'll send some of 'the boys' to memra software and just take some
computers for our use.

trademarks are owned, are property, are paid for and maintained by their
owners.  they are not for anyone to take, just because they like it.  yes,
there is lots of abuse of trademark law, as well as abuse of the process.
i still maintain that the basic concept of trademark law is sound and fair.

>> No, you type in the trademark for the truck:
>> www.toyota.com.
>
>To the best of my knowledge this is not a trademark of the Toyota Motor
>Company or any of its affiliated companies.

let me see if i understand this.   www. stands for 'world wide web', which
identifies the type of data i'll see (as opposed to ftp or email or
???-please remember, i'm really not techie-knowledgable).  toyota. stands
for the owner of the domain.  com indentifies the domain as a business or
personal usage, not a government, military, or non-profit use.  sounds like
www.toyata.com  is an unregistered trademark of toyota corp, and i suspect
most courts agree.

rick cricow  (who uses yujean.com to identify his business, the same as
memra.com identifies memra software)

  ------only two things that money can't buy;
                 one is true love, the other is home-grown tomatoes------
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   rick cricow                                        voice:541-484-7323
   net sales                                            fax:541-484-3099
   735 w. 7th ave.                                   orders:800-323-4463
   eugene, or  97402  u.s.a.                   on the web:www.yujean.com
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