Re: Thread 2: 60-day issue

[Carl Oppedahl <carl@oppedahl.com>]

At 02:56 AM 12/27/96 -0800, Kent Crispin wrote:
>Carl Oppedahl allegedly said:
>> 
>> At 05:08 PM 12/26/96 PST, Christopher Ambler wrote:
>> >Perry said...
>> >>Christopher Ambler writes:
>> >>> First off, I should echo Kent's comments that the 60-day period would
>> >>> apply to only a seriously small percentage of domains,
>> >>
>> >>I'd guess over 99% of contracts are never contested. Why do we bother
>> >>to write them down? Aren't written contracts just a "hassle" we
>> >>could do without?
>> >>
>> >>The vast majority of wills are simple. Why have a will at all?
>> >
>> >Because making a contract or writing a will harms nobody. A 60-day
>> >waiting period harms the vast vast majority of domain registrants.
>> 
>> Nope.  It helps them, months and years later.  By slowing down or halting
>> the latecomers who, months or years later, would try to force them to give
>> up their domain names.
>
>*Might* help them later.  And it isn't clear that a waiting period 
>would help any more than a pure publication period.

We have a publication period now, right?  Anybody who wants to can check
Whois to see that a domain name has been added, right?  Or they can
download the root-level server file (eight or ten megabytes, right?) and
compare it with yesterday's?  And indeed the publication period we have now
is one that lasts forever.  Yet we still have covetous-trademark-owner
lawsuits like clue, ty, regis, dci, disc, and juno.  And the hundreds of
other cases that didn't reach the point of being lawsuits because the
domain name owner didn't have enough money to sue.

Granted, the chief cause of most of those cases was the terrible NSI
policy.  But I am pointing out that having a publication period didn't seem
to dissuade those trademark owners in presenting their demands.


---
Carl Oppedahl, Oppedahl & Larson, patent law firm
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