[12316] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Re: Name Reg. Time for Policy Change
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Brad Templeton)
Mon May 16 00:50:21 1994
To: com-priv@psi.com
In-Reply-To: <Pine.3.87.9405132321.A27606-0100000@crl.crl.com>
Date: Sun, 15 May 94 1:22:26 PDT
From: Brad Templeton <brad@looking.clarinet.com>
>From what I know of trademark law, I don't see how Curry can have a chance
in hell, and I don't see why he should. He set it up in his capacity
as an employee, anyway.
Frankly, MTV could have done it a lot easier than suing him. They could
have written the NIC and said, "Mr. Curry is no longer employed by us.
Please change the IP address for mtv.com to <xxx>."
Of course, that would have avoided the interesting trademark case.
The NIC is correct that it would be a lot of work to confirm every name
that comes in and check it for trademark infringement. It need not do
this.
Some simple steps they could take would be to include in the application
file a line saying, "The applicant warrants that to the best of his/her/its
knowledge, use of this name does not infringe on the trademarks of another
party."
Note that it's simply "to the best of its knowledge", meaning you don't
force people to do a search, but you do make them swear they aren't
deliberately sneaking the name.
In addition, the NIC could buy one of those "complete USA business phone
book" CD-ROMS which can be had for about $99. I have one they gave out
for free. These are 99% effective at U.S. trademark search, in fact
they are often more effective than trademark databases.
It gets more complex than this, however. If you know your trademark law,
you know that word trademarks are not nouns, they are adjectives, and they
only exist modifying generic nouns. Thus you can have "Apple Computer"
and "Apple Auto Glass." It hasn't been the case in the past, but if they
had happened to be first, one can't see a reason to deny Apple Auto Glass
a domain like apple.com.
This would be a loophole, since I can certainly incorporate a company with
any set of initials and ask for xyz.com, where xyz is the initials of some
famous yet-unregistered firm.
