[142124] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: ICANN to allow commercial gTLDs
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Owen DeLong)
Sat Jun 18 04:25:44 2011
From: Owen DeLong <owen@delong.com>
In-Reply-To: <23532008.670.1308368398612.JavaMail.root@benjamin.baylink.com>
Date: Sat, 18 Jun 2011 01:24:37 -0700
To: Jay Ashworth <jra@baylink.com>
Cc: NANOG <nanog@nanog.org>
Errors-To: nanog-bounces+nanog.discuss=bloom-picayune.mit.edu@nanog.org
On Jun 17, 2011, at 8:39 PM, Jay Ashworth wrote:
> ----- Original Message -----
>> From: "Owen DeLong" <owen@delong.com>
>=20
>> MacDonald's would likely get title to .macdonalds under the new =
rules,
>> right?
>>=20
>> Well... Which MacDonald's?
>>=20
>> 1. The fast food chain
>> 2. O.C. MacDonald's Plumbing Supply
>> 3. MacDonald and Sons Paving Systems
>> 4. MacDonald and Madison Supply Company
>> 5. etc.
>>=20
>> All of them have legitimate non-conflicting trademarks on the name =
MacDonald's
>> (or at least could, I admit I made some of them up). I said when this =
mess
>> first started that mapping trademarks to DNS would only lead to =
dysfunction.
>> It did. Now the dysfunction is becoming all-encompassing. It will be=20=
>> interesting to watch the worlds IP lawyers (IP as in Intellectual =
Property,
>> not Internet Protocol)
>> eat their young over these issues for the next several decades.
>=20
> Indeed.
>=20
> It's actually "McDonalds", of course, and the US trademark law system =
has
> a provision for "famous" marks. I don't recall what the rules are, =
but=20
> once they've decide your mark is "famous", then it no longer competes =
only
> in its own line-of-business category; *no one* can register a new mark =
in=20
> any category using your word.
>=20
While that is true, there are several McDonalds registered in various =
spaces
that actually predate even the existance of Mr. Crok's famous burger =
joints.
> Coca-Cola, Sony, and I think Kodak, are the canonical examples of a
> famous mark.
>=20
Let us not also forget the over-extension of that situation, as applied =
to Jell-O
where there are now very bizarre rules about who can and can't refer to =
just
any gelatine dessert as Jell-O.
Owen
