Re: Trademarks, random strings, sharing, reserved words

[Kent Crispin <kent@songbird.com>]

Albert Tramposch allegedly said:
> 
> Michael Dillon wrote:
> >> Unfortunately, this proposal to help trademark owners can become a trademark
> >> owner's nightmare:  that is, by making the number of spaces to police for
> >> trademark infringement infinite.
> >Not at all. If all new registrations, changed registrations and deleted
> >registrations are published in a daily gazette then trademark owners will
> >have only *ONE* place to look no matter how many gTLD's register 3LD's
> >in a manner similar to .ALT.
> 
> Yes, of course, a single place to look is essential.  However, my point 
> (perhaps not well-stated) was that there would be an unlimited number 
> of possible infringing domain names that trademark owners would have to 
> contend with.  If a trademark owner goes to court to stop, say, ten 
> infringing names, it could then immediately be faced with an additional 
> ten or twenty or a hundred more in the additional TLDs.  Even if this is 
> just a case of harrassment by some unhappy third party, it still is a
> nightmare for the trademark owner.

Let me ask a question:  Suppose I decide to name the machines on my 
network after soft drinks -- I have pepsi.songbird.com, 
coke.songbird.com, sprite.songbird.com, drpepper.songbird.com, etc.  
In fact, it would be less than an hours work to set up 
www.pepsi.songbird.com and all the rest, and have them live on the 
internet. 

Would this be a trademark infringement or dilution? If so, do Pepsi
and Coke etc currently police third and fourth level domains for
infringement or dilution?  If not, why should second level domains be 
singled out?  At present there are probably 3/4 of a million SLDs, 
and in ten years there will be ten million SLDs, for organizations, 
individuals, companies, and other entities.  Is it reasonable to 
require companies to do constant trademark searches to avoid 
dilution?  I have a tiny company, but I went to the trouble and 
expense of getting a trademark for Songbird, just so NSI wouldn't 
come along and jerk the name away from me.  But I don't want to spend 
my time going over lists of new domain names, or paying a lawyer to 
do it for me.

The real goal here should be to make domain names *completely 
independent of trademark*, not establish policies that mix them in 
that legal morass.  The primary problem with the 60 day wait is that 
it legitimizes the notion that domain name policy should be 
conditioned by such issues.

So, an "unlimited number of possible infringing domain names" is a
*good* thing for almost all trademark owners, because it makes it
completely and transparently clear that domain names really are a
different realm, so completely and transparently clear that reasonable
laws will be drafted and reasonable precedent will be established
regarding the relationship between domain names and trademark.

-- 
Kent Crispin				"No reason to get excited",
kent@songbird.com,kc@llnl.gov		the thief he kindly spoke...
PGP fingerprint:   5A 16 DA 04 31 33 40 1E  87 DA 29 02 97 A3 46 2F