Re: 60 day period

[Carl Oppedahl <carl@oppedahl.com>]

At 11:38 AM 01/10/97 -0500, Vince Wolodkin wrote:
>Sally Abel wrote and wrote and wrote and wrote....
>
>>From her posting I can deduce the following points:
>
>1)  INTA knows absolutely nothing about business on the internet.

I have tried to hold my tongue, but this statement is out of line.  The
Internet Subcommittee of INTA and the members of IAHC that belong to INTA
are all extraordinarily experienced in this area.  What's more, they were
and are advised by many other members of the Internet community who know as
much as there is to know about business on the Internet.  I, as a frequent
advocate in favor of businesses on the Internet (e.g. Roadrunner Computer
Systems v. NSI), know quite a bit about business on the Internet, and INTA
members have been quite gracious about receiving suggestions from me.  Mr.
Wolodkin, you owe an apology to those whom you have insulted by this
statement.

>2)  The waiting period is useless since by her own words courts already
>recognize that someone being infringed upon must act relatively quickly.

You are mistaken in the extreme.  Courts at the present time seem to have a
bit of difficulty discerning the difference between a case in which some
Internet business is, by its conduct, infringing someone's trademarks, and
a case in which the only thing going on is that someone with a trademark
wants to take away someone's domain name.  Courts have not yet quite caught
on that if the only supposed basis for a trademark claim is the mere
registration of a domain name, then the lawsuit probably should have been
brought long ago.

You are also missing completely the distinction that Ms. Abel was talking
about, between a grant or denial of *preliminary* injunctive relief, on the
one hand, and permanent injunctive relief on the other.

>3)  The only argument given for non-use was so that the domain applicant
>wouldn't become attached to the domain name.

No, that was not the only argument.  Fortunately there is an archive of
this list, so that people can go back and see what the other arguments were.

>Wow!  I am so happy a representative of INTA is on the IAHC.  In
>retrospect this was probably a mistake(ditto for WIPO) since as Mr Higgs
>points out RFC 1591 explicitly says that registries WILL NOT be involved
>in trademark issues but will instead just provide contact info to both
>parties.

RFC is pretty darn good.  As you will see from my paper
<http://www.patents.com/nsi/iip.sht> I think RFC 1591 is pretty darn good.
But I don't see how it follows, as the night follows the day, that
divergence from RFC 1591 means that something "is probably a mistake".  I
also don't see how it follows from RFC 1591 that no one from the trademark
community should play any role in trying to figure out what to do next.

>And as I have siad before, ANY attempt to - through registry policy -
>alleviate perceived problems in regard to points of law will severely
>backfire, one only needs to look as far as NSI to know this is so. 

Wrong.  NSI tried to (and continues to try to) conduct its own court in
absentia, leading to its getting sued by domain name owners who don't
particularly like that NSI doesn't invite them to its trials.  The IAHC
proposal does the exact opposite, avoiding any trademark decisionmaking by
the registry.

>Scrap everything in the draft that speaks to trademarks.  

Nothing in the draft speaks to trademarks, other than to say that the
registry will not evaluate trademark claims.

Carl Oppedahl