Re: 60 day thought

[Carl Oppedahl <carl@oppedahl.com>]

At 06:30 PM 12/21/96 -0600, Christopher Sevcik wrote:
>
>one more thought:
>
>There are thousands and thousands of trademarks.  The companies which
>have either the most money or the most resources, pay organizations
>to monitor pending trademark requests to ensure there is no conflict of
>interest....
>
>ok, what if a genuine trademark holder DID NOT pay for this service?
>
>...I know ignorance is no excuse, but I can't imagine every single
>trademark holder is going to catch the domains to be, within the 60 day
>period....in time to raise a flag and raise dispute.

>End result:  60 days solves only a small percentage of valid claims.

There are answers to your questions, and here they are.

In the area of trademarks, ignorance is indeed no excuse.  A trademark
owner who fails to "police their mark" will be deemed to have abandoned it.
 Right now in the US trademark law there is something called an "opposition
period".  When someone applies for a US trademark registration, there comes
a time when the pending application is "published for opposition".  During
that time it's easy for anybody to present their gripe if they have one.
After that, it is incredibly more difficult to do so, generally requiring
court or other lawyer-intensive measures.  And indeed someone who snoozes,
loses.  

Under the IAHC proposal it would also be that "you snooze, you lose".  Not
that a trademark owner would be completely unable to get a domain name cut
off after the 60 days, but at least they would have to go to court and come
up with some good reason why they didn't oppose it during the 60 days.  And
under the IAHC proposal you would no longer be vulnerable to arbitrary and
capricious cutoffs by NSI, as you are today.

I guess I am not clear on what you would call a "valid claim".  By my
definition of "valid claim", the IAHC proposal treats valid claims pretty
fairly.

Think of a product package.  You decide to call the soap "framistan" brand
soap.  After a couple of years, some company suddenly wakes up and decides
to challenge your soap name in court.  Well, they may have to explain to
the judge why they waited until now to complain.  If there's a good excuse
(e.g. the domain name suddenly got used for some different and infringing
product) then maybe the judge takes action anyway.  Same with domain names.