Re: [ICANN-EU] Re: WIPO

["Andreas Fügner" <Andreas.Fuegner@lizenz.com>]

Dear Jeanette:

>Trademarks by definition refer to territories. Applied to cyberspace, 
>they may also generate conflicts among themselves. 

Yes they do sometimes. That's why finding the apropriate
court is difficult. IMHO, all trademark cases in cyberspace
are worldwide cases. Or at least cases within one language 
group all over the world, f.e. all french speaking countries.

>All this makes sense for a minority of domain name holders only: 
>multinational corporations. Should the whole DNS adjust to their 
>concerns?

More the other way around. Only trademarks famous all over cyberspace
are protected. That means, only trademarks known by at least 50% 
of the cyber population should be protected. Say good by to TATA.

>> 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.


At ICANN we won't be able to re-distribute money in the world.

>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. 


Yep. Once a generic word becomes a trademark by usage, 
it is protected and can be registered. F.e. Mercedes is a female 
name. The founders could not register it as a word trademark. 
They only could register it as a word/picture trademark. It was
only allowed to register as a word trademark after the name 
Mercedes became a synonym for the cars.

Andreas Fuegner