[12331] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Re: Name Reg. Time for Policy Change
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Mike Walsh)
Mon May 16 07:52:32 1994
In-Reply-To: <199405140246.TAA07675@is.internic.net>
Date: Mon, 16 May 94 00:22:33 -0500
To: "Kent W. England" <kwe@cerf.net>
Cc: com-priv@psi.com
From: "Mike Walsh" <p00426@psilink.com>
>
>Sounds like a business opportunity for you to check trademark and
>servicemark registration, not something new for Registration Services to
>undertake.
>
Let me save the ambulance chasing trademark lawyers some time. I
already did the analysis.
While doing some market research about which companies are on the
internet, I did an analysis of the commercial domain on rs.internic.net
back in Mid April. There were about 12,700 unique commercial names
registered in my sample. I compared the domain against the corporate
name of the owner. Before I got out of the A's I found three potential
trademarks conflicts Amway, ABC, and Amiga.
In total, I found around fifty conflicts. I was suprised not to find
more. I don't think an attorney will get rich pursuing any of these
conflicts. Most stem from a small company like International Boiler
Machinery using IBM (not a real example).
Clearly, Cyberspace has been getting crowded and there have been some
cases of missed opportunity. For example, some financial institution
in California grabbed Fidelity.com so Fidelity investments had to use
Fidelity-Inv.com. Not the end of the world for Fidelity but I think
they might have preferred the shorter name.
Some other interesting facts from an analysis of the commercial domain.
237 of the largest 490 public companies are connnected to the net. 131
of the 260 publicly traded software companies have a presence on the
net. Only 19% of the companies listed in the commercial domain can be
found in any other database of corporate entities... 81% are either
very new, very dead or (most likely) very small. 32% can be
automatically classified as having something to do with computers or
communications i.e. their corporate names include the magic words,
micro, digital, network etc., etc.
Mike Walsh mwalsh@internetinfo.com aka p00426@psilink.com
InterNet Info.... Info for, on and about the InterNet
