Re: 60 day waiting period.... a suggestion ...

[Carl Oppedahl <carl@oppedahl.com>]

At 09:51 PM 12/21/96 -0600, Christopher Sevcik wrote:

>At 07:37 PM 12/21/96 -0500, Carl Oppedahl wrote:

><snip>

>>If somebody with a meritless claim goes to
>>NSI under the present policy, you are screwed.  Under the proposed policy,
>>if someone with a meritless claim were to go to a court, the judge is going
>>to look at them and say, "where were you during the 60-day period?  If it's
>>so important, then why did you wait until now to complain?"  The judge is
>>going to be inclined to protect the status quo, namely you.
>
>need clarification as to what the iahc is saying then:
>
>What about existing domain names, such as the domain names we all
>own right now?  .....or would this new 60 day umbrella only be good
>for all new domains?
>
>How do we handle the current 650,000+ domains in existance today?

Well, between now and when NSI's contract ends in 1998 (at which time I
hope and trust someone else administers COM) the existing COM domains are
handled by the same terribly flawed NSI trademark domain name policy, until
some court sooner or later orders NSI to pay awards big bucks to some
domain name owner for NSI's wrongful cutoff of a domain name, at which time
NSI will scrap its policy once and for all.

Someone else will be running COM starting in 1998.  I note that NSI is now
absolutely alone -- *no one* has risen to defend NSI's policy and most have
pointed it out for what it is -- a dismal failure and a mistake.  I have
compiled at <http://www.patents.com/nsi.sht> some of the condemnations and
criticisms of the policy, from the IAHC, from the Domain Name Rights
Coalition, from the International Trademark Association, and indeed from
the United States Federal Judge in the Panavision case.  The point is, that
whoever takes over COM after NSI loses the renewal of the contract, will
not make (and will not be permitted to make) the same stupid mistake with
its trademark domain name policy.  And, by the way, if in 1998 all the
other registration authorities are doing the 60-day period as suggested by
IAHC, then the NSI-administered COM domains will all be treated as domains
that had their 60-day opposition period long ago.

Meanwhile the courts will know all of this.  They'll know that nowadays
(speaking in 1998) there is this 60-day waiting period, and they will know
to ask any plaintiff why, exactly, they did not gripe during the waiting
period.  And in some cases the plaintiff will have some excuse, like the
domain name owner did innocent things at first and only later did they
stray into the trademark owner's line of business.