Re: [ga] Trademark-free TLDs

[Danny Younger <dannyyounger@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hello Karl,

Under the present system that provides Sunrise
opportunities for trademark holders you would never be
able to secure hummer.tld for yourself as it would be
snatched up long before you got to the Land Rush.  I
agree that a "reservation" approach is less than
optimum, but remain convinced that most TLD applicants
will continue to kowtow to intellectual property
interests in order to maximize their chances of
obtaining the coveted TLD.  

This is a consequence of the beauty contest approach
which will necessarily prevail unless the Board can be
convinced to pursue an auction approach.  Yes, I know
that Mike Palage has indicated that the ICANN Staff is
keen on auctions, but I have yet to see support for
that approach throughout the GNSO constituencies --
see
http://www.onlineaccountability.net/IPC/PDFs/2005_Sep15_Agenda_Minutes.pdf

--- Karl Auerbach <karl@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> 
> 
> On Sat, 14 Jan 2006, Danny Younger wrote:
> 
> > I have submitted a proposal for Trademark-free
> TLDs to
> > the public comment forum:
> 
> You are starting from the wrong premise - there is
> nothing about any TLD 
> that creates a free-fire zone for trademark holders
> to gun down anybody 
> and anyone they feel impinges on their
> self-proclaimed right to expand 
> trade/service mark law to the starts and beyond.
> 
> Yet that is what you are suggesting - that except
> for a few reservations 
> (sort of the internet analog to the kind of
> geographical reservations that 
> North American and South African aboriginal groups
> were confined into) - 
> trademarks on the net are to be construed as
> dominating and superseding 
> any other right.
> 
> Absent specific use it is really hard to find that a
> registration in a TLD 
> of a sequence of characters violates any legislated
> regime of 
> trade/service mark.  I might have "hummer.tld" and
> it doesn't rise to 
> actionable impingement unless I actually use it in
> some way in commerce 
> that infringes on the rights of General Motors.
> 
> The simple bottom line is that *all* TLDs are
> subject to the 
> laws of trade/service marks.  And equally, no TLD
> should go beyond the 
> limits of legislated laws (the UDRP being an obvious
> case of a 
> non-legislated law) to increase the rights of
> mark-holders, and thus 
> reduce the rights of non-mark holders (it's a
> zero-sum situation).
> 
>  		--karl--
> 
> 


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