Trademark classification DOES NOT work. Period.

[Robert Frank <bobf@corsearch.com>]

Hi:

We don't seem to make much progress over time on some issues.  The reason the  below listed system doesn't work is that it fails to take into account that classification of trademarks is only one level of differentiating trademarks.  Within classes there are goods and services.  For example, presently there are 20 (yes 20) registrations for the word GENESIS in Class 9 at the USPTO.  Some of these are:

Genesis for loudspeakers, owned by Genesis Physics Corporation
Genesis for Industrial Robots, owned by Genesis Ltd.
Genesis for Computer Programs used for Church Management, owned by Tim Mccarrell
Genesis for Telescopes and Binoculars, owned by Kowa Company
Genesis for glasses (eyewear) owned by Alpine International
Genesis for scuba tanks owned by Berkshire Marketing

Any plan that desires to map to trademark classification needs to address this issue.  The plan described below fails because it doesn't allow multiple Genesis registrations in the US (genesis.tm.us) nor multiple genesis registrations in a particular class (genesis.tm.9) or multiple genesis registrations in the US (genesis.tm.us.9).  If would sure be fine if those who have no understanding of trademarks or trademark law would quit describing how trademark classification provides a solution.  This has been looked at over the years by the International Trademark Association and IAHC and found to be totally inadequate.  Finally, it does not take into account common law trademark rights (rights that are not registered).

Robert Frank, President
CORSEARCH, Inc.

>
>Any-Mark.tm  	          Any-Mark as a worldwide recognized mark
>Any-Mark.tm.us            Any-Mark as a mark recognized in US
>Any-Mark.tm.35            Any-Mark as a mark recognized under class 35
>Any-Mark.tm.us.35       Any-Mark as a mark recognized in US under class 
>35

With these great suggestions, I think you have credited yourself enough.
a) ".tm" already exists. It's the ISO-TLD for turkmenistan.
b) ".35" would be a numerical TLD. Go check out the problems for those.
c) ".us" is *not* organised as you'd like it (though maybe that wouldn't
be a bad idea).
The questions that I have now for you are:
-are you proposing a whole new DNS structure (ie, throw out what's
currently there and implement your idea)?
-are you trying to implement a method to add in gTLDs?
-are you proposing changes to ISO-TLDs? If so, are you suggesting
 some "mandate" that they would all have to respect? If so, how would
 you go about implementing it? With all due respect, I think you'd
 have a hard time telling China how to run ".cn".

(...)
>Price for registration under this ".tm" TLD might well be included in 
>trademark registration cost.
>As a positive side effect we get a very simple Trademark checking 
>directory on Internet !

Ever stopped to think that trademark law, and trademark registration
differs widely from country to country?
I believe that WIPO has been trying for many years to handle the nightmare
of world trademarks, and being generous one could say that they're still
trying... yet you pretend to apply a global trademark unity (which is non
existant) onto internet dns. I think I'll just wait until that global
unity is achieved before going along with your proposal...

(...)
>© 1997, Benjamin Azevedo

You can keep it. (if you can manage to retain your copyRIGHTS in each
country).

Yours, John Broomfield.