[12385] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Name Reg. Time for Policy Change
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Barry Shein)
Tue May 17 11:05:47 1994
Date: Tue, 17 May 1994 00:44:39 -0400
From: bzs@world.std.com (Barry Shein)
To: nelson@crynwr.com
Cc: com-priv@psi.com
In-Reply-To: Russell Nelson's message of Mon, 16 May 94 18:41 EDT <m0q3BMA-000I7hC@crynwr>
>From: nelson@crynwr.com (Russell Nelson) [responding to me]
> My impression, based on closed cases like the Sun/BT yellow pages
> thing, is that you project your trademark into a country where it is
> protected and you lose.
>
>Why? I never intended to do business in the UK [ speaking
>hypothetically of yellow-pages.com]. Still don't. Why should BT and
>the UK trademark authority have *anything* whatsoever to say how I run
>my business and domain name in the US?
>
>You haven't adequately explained this to me.
Hey, there might be other angles here that neither of us have
considered, I don't claim omniscience on this issue. I can half
convince myself that there are possible subtleties but can't come up
with any very good examples.
As someone else pointed out there *are* geographical limitations to
trademark (tho they can be global or almost global, but they can also
be limited to a very small area, how many "Mom's Diner"s are there?)
The underlying rule is: Is it possible that some consumer might
mistake one company's use of the mark as representing the other
company?
Fundamentally trademark is there to protect the consumer. Even if
companies consider it valuable property that's the underlying
motivation: Protection of the consumer to know that when s/he goes
into a hamburger joint called McDonald's or buys bottled brown liquid
labelled Coca-Cola that it's what they reasonably believe it to be
(i.e. the product of those companies.)
For example, if you put up an FTP server on your (unrelated) pepsi.com
host that contained offensive materials and people got angry at
PepsiCo, Inc would it be reasonable for A) pepsi to claim you have
violated their trademark (add in the two country scenario, it doesn't
change anything really if the complaints are coming from their
public.) And B) people who were thus misled, when they realize what
happened, to claim that you have defrauded the public?
Take the case of MTV.COM. If Curry put up some information about some
rock+roll star that angered the public would it be reasonable for them
to assume that this was the work/irresponsibility of MTV the station?
Would that be fair to MTV? Would it be fair to that consumer?
-Barry Shein
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