Re: [ICANN-EU] Re: WIPO

[Marc Schneiders <marc@venster.nl>]

On Sun, 17 Sep 2000 jeanette@medea.wz-berlin.de wrote:

> > > A trademark is registered to clearly and unmistakably 
> > > identify the producer of certain goods or provider of certain
> > > services. A trademark can be registered for one or more 
> > > categories, called classes of products and services.
> > > BTW, that can include services like publishing including 
> > > on the www or services including electronic mail, etc. 
> 
> Trademarks by definition refer to territories. Applied to cyberspace, 
> they may also generate conflicts among themselves. 

Yes, the WWF (wrestlers) and the WWF (panda) :-)

> > > Just put yourselve into the shoes of the trademark owner of
> > > Mercedes for a while. Maybe you own some shares? :-)
> > > You invested decades of work and tons of money to
> > > establish the trademark. You took care to built an image and 
> > > a reputation for whatever under this trademark. You made extra
> > > investments to insure quality and consumer satisfaction. 
> > > People now trust in the consistent quality of product offered and 
> > > services randered under your trademark.
> > > 
> > > Now somebody else takes advantage of your trademark,
> > > your reputation or prestige by publishing something on the 
> > > internet or offering electronic services under your trademark. 
> > > Maybe the person even attempts to damage the image of it.
> > > How would you personally react?
> 
> All this makes sense for a minority of domain name holders only: 
> multinational corporations. Should the whole DNS adjust to their 
> concerns?

They have a very strong and powerful lobby with ICANN. I am sure you are
aware of that.

> > I would sue them if I had the money Mercedes Benz has :-)
> 
> This is exactly the problem: the imbalance of ressources allocated 
> to varying rights to names.

Exactly. Maybe the UDRP should have a scale of fees where bigger companies
pay more... (Very romantic, I know.) They would think twice before they
start a complaint then, just as smaller companies and individuals have to
do already at the moment.
 
> > > Lastly, to make this information more complete, 
> > > most trademark laws prohibit the registration 
> > > of what is defined as a common word like house,
> > > bus, business, etc. 
> > 
> > Good and let that for once be as widely interpreted as WIPO interprets
> > trademark rights. 
> 
> I know of several German cases, where generic terms have been 
> subjected to intellectual property claims: "Freundin", the journal, is 
> one, the broadcast program "Die Sendung mit der Maus" is 
> another. 

Obviously you have a much better idea of what is happening in Germany than
I do. I am under the impression though, that Germany is in the forefront
of the protection of trademarks. Not very good, I think.

[...]
>  > >Which gets us to: to start solving a number of the problems
> > > >of DNS we have to get WIPO out of ICANN.
> 
> I think the idea of matching trademarks & real/ famous names to 
> domain names is a dead end in the long run. Flat name spaces 
> like .com or .de are by far not complex enough to adequately 
> reflect the millions of Millers, Meiers and Smiths who in principle 
> have a justifiable claim to equivalent domain names.  
> Conflicts about trademarks are just the tip of the iceberg.  

You are right of course. The problem is bigger than trademarks. However,
only the trademark lobby has succeeded in getting what it wants, to wit
the UDRP and its partly illegal application by WIPO. Only trademark
holders can oust domain name owners. Of course this has already been
extended in practice to famous names generally, as well as geographical
names by WIPO, even if WIPO itself is still asking comment on the very
same matter. (If that isn't sheer hypocracy, I am an elefant.)

 > What we need is a directory system complex enough to be able to >
> mirror real names, brandnames, trademarks and whatever we may
> come up with tomorrow. The DNS is simply not up to this function - 
> and it was never meant to. 

People do like to remember names, addresses etc. They do not want to have
to use directories, unless the cannot remember a name or number. Internet
works very similarly, I think.

 > Sometime, perhaps even soon, somebody will introduce
> such a directory system - white and yellow pages for the Net, that is.
>  According to Schueller, German Telekom and other telcos are
> already working on this.  Will this be a proprietory service or
> a public recource? 

Ask Mr Schueller :-)
The strength of DNS is that it is accessible for everyone, at least in the
first world. A domain is not expensive. What will a good position in Mr
Schueller's directory cost? 
Well Real Names somehow seems to have failed. There is hope.

When I listen to the radio, I hear ads mentioning a webaddress. In the
past there were indeed occasional radio ads here that mentioned the yellow
pages for a phonenumber. Most, however, gave the phonenumber, even though
this is difficult to remember.

> In any case, I think the battle over the DNS will vanish, sooner or >
> later.

Rather later, I would think. As long as people advertize webadresses on
billboards, radio etc. they will be important.

Even if sooner, this cannot mean that the issues mentioned above can be
left alone. They *are* important. 

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 Marc Schneiders (more in the header)
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