Re: 60 day wait

[Carl Oppedahl <carl@oppedahl.com>]

At 07:04 AM 01/13/97 -0500, Leo Smith wrote:

>> What is the point of a 60 day waiting period? 
>
>The only point to the 60 day wait is to somehow enhance protection for
>trademark rights holders, 

I am sorry but you have it backwards.  The only point to the 60-day wait is
to enhance protection for domain name owners after the 60 days is up.  If
it has any effect at all trademark rights holders, the effect is in the
direction of reducing protection for them, for the simple reason that it
tends to reduce their ability to secure remedies after the 60 days is up.

>particularly from enterprising brokers who
>register URLs with the intention of reselling them. While some may say that
>what the brokers are doing is "wrong" or "disgusting", the bottom line is
>that what these brokers are doing is LEGAL. 

For non-unique trademarks you are right.

>No one has a pre-ordained right
>to united.com. If a broker goes out an secures united.com and then tries to
>resell it for $10,000, good for him and tough for United Air Lines, United
>Van Lines, United Parcel Service, etc. So long as the broker does not
>infringe on a trademark (which probably would occur in extremely few cases,
>such as pepsi.com), the broker should be free to take out whatever URLs he
>wants, and offer them for resale at whatever price the market will bear.
>A very major goal of the 60 day wait is to somehow reduce or impede the
>ability of brokers to obtain URLs and then ransom them. The only parties to
>benefit from reducing ransommed URLs are those paying the ransom...namely
>the trademark holders. In those instances where trademark law does not
>extend protection to a gTLD, such as in united.com, it's just tough luck
>for United Air Lines if they wanted united.com, but didn't get there first
>to register. 

As it happens, I agree with you about domain names such as united.com.  But
I consider it irrelevant in the extreme, how a present or proposed
trademark domain name policy affects domain name brokers.  What I consider
relevant is its effect on actual users of domain names.