[12360] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Name Reg. Time for Policy Change
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Barry Shein)
Mon May 16 19:51:34 1994
Date: Mon, 16 May 1994 14:40:55 -0400
From: bzs@world.std.com (Barry Shein)
To: brad@looking.clarinet.com
Cc: com-priv@psi.com
In-Reply-To: Brad Templeton's message of Sun, 15 May 94 22:33:00 PDT <9405152233.aa29246@looking.clarinet.com>
>From: Brad Templeton <brad@looking.clarinet.com>
>Which means that people might still go out and register foo.com, not use
>it and try to "sell" it to Foo Inc. later. Which is not a good thing.
There is some strong "use it or lose it" tradition in trademark law
that someone willing to fight can utilize to undo that sort of thing.
I wouldn't try it with companies that have brawny corporate counsel
departments. About the best you can hope for is to offer to sell it
off for less than a legal fight would cost, but most companies would
be pretty good at smelling out the bluff and facing a six or seven
digit infringement suit on such shoddy grounds might re-focus the
mind.
I doubt any jury would be too sympathetic towards someone whose only
purpose appears to be to extort someone else. If it even got to a
jury. Likely a judge would see thru it, sign an injunction or court
order or whatever, and then the wise guy can decide whether it's worth
investing $20,000 to fight to overturn that judicial order. Boom,
there goes all the leverage.
I could tell you which side of that bet *I'd* take...
-Barry Shein
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