RE: Thread 2: 60-day issue

[David Rosenthal <rosenthal@insider.ch>]

>
>From: 	Carl Oppedahl[SMTP:carl@oppedahl.com]
>Sent: 	Mittwoch, 25. Dezember 1996 16:55
>To: 	David Rosenthal
>Cc: 	'iahc-discuss@iahc.org'
>Subject: 	RE: Thread 2: 60-day issue
>>
>>I agree. Some people simply have to learn about the Internet the hard
>>way. And that's their problem, not mine and not ours.
>
>I wish you were right.  But the courts around NSI are filled with cases
>in
>which the failure of a trademark owner to learn about the Internet is
>indeed our problem, and mine and yours, for the simple reason that NSI
>encourages the trademark owner to try to grab the domain name now,
>after
>someone else has been using it for many years.  NSI will quite
>cheerfully
>cut off a domain name even if someone has been quietly using it and
>infringing no one's rights for many years, for no better reason than
>that a
>covetous trademark owner asks them to.

You might understand, why I am so happy to live here in Switzerland and
with the .ch nTLD <g>. Sooner or later, I believe, people won't be crazy
anymore as they are today about having them registered in the .com
domain and other trends will come up. Why not using the .us nTLD? The
rest of the world outside the US uses national TLDs very well. 

However, what makes me worry is, that there might be no gTLD-registrar
in Switzerland at all at the end and I would have to accept a foreign
personal jurisdiction / venue for any lawsuits in relation with a gTLD I
have registered. That's the proposal of the IAHC and, frankly, I don't
understand it from a legal point of view. At least under Swiss law the
proposed jurisdiction clause would not be enforcable universally since a
contractual agreement on jurisdiction (or applicable law) is binding
only for the contract parties. A third party (that might want to sue me
directly, because it's me using the domain-name) cannot make use of it,
so instead the general rules for determining the forum are applied. But
that's another discussion. 

David

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