Re: News update

[Mark Measday <measday@josmarian.ch>]

Mr Shaw gives the most cogent, concise and coherent explanation, leaving aside
short-term commercial and political interest for the most efficient and logical
solution.

What would it take to persuade the political entities involved to also derive a
solution based on rational global need rather than political or commercial interest,
or, pragmatically, rational global needs based on those political and commercial
interests?.

Could it still be argued that the opportunity in the case of the gTLD-MOU for a
long-term non-US-centric solution is more in the interest of the current trademark
fraternity as an exemplar of the internationalization of their conception of
intellectual property rights than a short-term US-centric one in which the strong
form of their views remains by and large unaccepted? I would hazard a guess that
choice of the second option leaves open the possibility of growing opposition and a
longer-term subordination of their interests. One would have thought the nature of
the uniqueness problem associated with gTLDs a gift to intellectual property experts
in terms of long-term harmonization and that an internationalist perspective in
terms of extending their views more widely would be seen as more profitable that
short-term defence of the status quo.

I hope Mr Shaw can be persuaded to explain, in a similar concise and elegant fashion
as his statement below, if the logic of the reality of the uniqueness of the DNS
should, in the long run, interpolate itself into the logic of trademark law and
international cooperation as an example of how a new resource is administered at an
international level, or if, on the contrary, the benefits of individual dissonance
at personal, corporate or country level will outweigh the logical case he makes.

Mark Measday
London

Robert Shaw wrote:

> Phillip C. Reed wrote:
> >
> > I have yet to see any evidence that would indicate that more TLDs, hence
> > more domain names, would make things any better.
>
> The logic goes like this:
>
> 1. TLDs combined with SLDs are unique identifiers
>
> 2. But the non-DNS world is based on non-unique names. For example, the
>    multi-dimensional space of (largely national) trademark law is a
>    reflection of the reality of a shared real-world name space (e.g., x
>    numbers of registrations of the word "Genesis" in one of the 42 Nice
>    trademark class). Needless to say, the intersection of national trademark
>    law with gTLDs make this problem worse.
>
> 3. Reflecting this shared real-world name space requires additional identifiers
>    to uniquely differentiate entities in the DNS.
>
> 5. This can be accomplished by introducing additional qualifier or hierarchy
>    entry points, namely:
>
>    a. introducing subdomain granularity (e.g., delta.air.com, delta.30.com)
>    b. additional textual qualifiers in an SLD (e.g., delta-air.com)
>    c. numerical identifiers in an SLD (e.g., delta4.com)
>    d. numerical identifiers in the TLD (e.g., delta.c41)
>    e. additional gTLDs (delta.air)
>
> 6. Because of:
>
>    a. Market preference for short and mnemonic names
>    b. Installed base of names using the current gTLD naming convention
>    c. History of the gTLD name space with no subdomain granularity
>    d. Unlikely market acceptance of numerical qualifiers/hierarchies
>       (e.g., delta44.com)
>    e. The importance that entities attach to using their 'unique' names (in
>       their world/context)
>    e. Unlikely market acceptance of non-meaningful gTLDs (e.g., delta.c41 even
>       if this might be the most scalable)
>    f. proof of a-e above through many conflicts over rights to names even when
>       global Internet penetration is still statistically small.
>
> Leaves 5(e) as the only acceptable solution.
>
> However, this causes creates pain for trademark holders who daily have to deal
> with entities registering their trademarks in different venues either out of
> malevolence or ignorance. The international legal trademark framework is
> quasi-completely unprepared to deal with this phenomenon (e.g., there are no
> substantive guidelines as to what constitutes a strong or famous trademark at
> the international level). This had made it extremely difficult to hammer down
> the Administrative Domain Name Challenge Panel (ACP) substantive guidelines
> (see http://www.gtld-mou.org/docs/dispute.html and specifically
> http://www.gtld-mou.org/docs/notice-98-01.html).
>
> As new gTLDs are introduced that over time that necessarily become more specific
> in character (e.g., .info vs .sports), this provides a form of quasi-trademark
> name space mapping (e.g., if prince.sports had been available, would Prince
> US have attempted to litigate over prince.com?). It's clear that the dispute
> resolution framework will have to evolve next to accomodate the granularity
> introduced by more specific gTLD names.
>
> Robert
> --
> Robert Shaw <robert.shaw@itu.int>
> Advisor, Global Information Infrastructure
> International Telecommunication Union <http://www.itu.int>
> Place des Nations, 1211 Geneva, Switzerland