[12475] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Domain names, company names, and trademarks
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Draper Kauffman)
Wed May 18 20:06:53 1994
Date: Wed, 18 May 1994 18:08:42 -0700
To: com-priv@psi.com
From: draperK@io.com (Draper Kauffman)
The long exchange of posts about MTV, domain names, trademarks, new naming
systems, etc. has seemed weirdly unconnected to real life. On the off
chance tht we haven't quite hammered the subjects into the ground, I offer
these miscellaneous thoughts and questions:
* It would help if posters would distinguish between "strong" marks based
on made-up words (Pepsi, Compaq, Kodak, Xerox, Aquatred, Exxon, etc.) and
weak ones based on existing words or names (Apple, Fidelity, Continental,
Digital, Igloo, etc.). A strong mark gives its owner some standing in a
general effort to keep people from diluting the uniqueness of the mark. A
company with a weak mark only has rights to use it for specific products,
perhaps in specific areas, and may not even be able to enforce those rights
if the word is in common usage to describe or categorize those products.
(Trademarking "RAINPROOF brand camping gear" won't keep your competitors
from describing their products as "rainproof.").
* Initials, especially short sets of initials, are so widely shared that
they are pretty weak marks. How many "ABC Appliance-or-Whatever" companies
are there in the US alone? Just because a media company is more visible
than others, its name will be better known. Does that give it the right to
force another user to stop using the same initials? Certainly ABC-TV has
never been able to do so, so why should MTV be specially blessed?
* Domain "names" aren't names. They aren't company names, brand names,
personal names, or product names. They are addresses. Delta Airlines, for
example, has no more intrinsic right to keep someone from registering and
using delta.com than they have to keep a travel agency somewhere from
putting "So-and-So Travel, 600 Delta Ave" on their ads and stationery.
* Do people REALLY think there's going to be a confusion between company
names or trademarks and domain names? If so, it can easily be eliminated
by requiring that a domain name be uniquely descriptive of a company or a
trademark to have protected status. Thus, nobody but the airline could
register Delta-Airlines.com, but delta.com goes to the first requester.
Only Apple could register Macintosh-computers.com, but anyone could
register mac.com. And so on. Under this rule Curry would keep mtv.com,
but MTV-Broadcasting.com would be reserved for the company.
* What's so special about .com? If the Apple Growers Association wants to
create an Apple.org, does Apple Computer Company have some special right to
interfere? What if the association has been around longer than the
company? Can they make Apple give up apple.com? Why not? One doesn't
have to "reductio" very far with this concept to get to "absurdum."
Then of course, we'd need new three letter domains for .INC, .LTD, .PSC,
.PTY, .PRT (partnerships), .DBA, .MOB, .PHD, .MBA, .CPA, .DOC, .DDS, .KID,
.MOM, .SKI, .FLY ..... Why should edu, gov, mil, org, and com have all the
fun?
* Country codes could (should?) represent nationality, not location, since
nationality changes much less often than location. And when it does
change, it is usually part of a major upheaval and reidentification
process, in which case obtaining a new domain name is entirely appropriate.
* Domain names are intended to be mnemonics for IP numbers. When they get
longer and more complicated than the numbers, people will revert to using
IP numbers and handing them out on business cards, putting them on
letterhead, and building databases of them, just as we do with phone
numbers and fax numbers already. We've already gotten to that point with
some domain names. Any invented domain-name system that is harder to use
than four or five octals is a non-starter.
* Using phone numbers for domain names? First, they aren't portable.
Second, the phone company can already change your phone number on a whim to
suit its own convenience--do you really want them doing that to your
Internet address as well? Instead of enslaving the net to the
inconveniences of the phone system, we can use the net to overcome those
inconveniences. Lose track of a friend when he moves? No problem. Send
him email and ask for his new phone number.
* In any case, we're not far from a universal name-address-phone#-IP#
database that let's you find a company or person by any field(s) and gives
you the rest of the record--assuming they want to be found.
Sorry for the excess. Responses are welcome, of course. :)
Draper
--
Draper Kauffman, Ed.D.
draperk@io.com
Illuminati Online, the Internet services division of Steve Jackson Games
Yes, we won. We even got paid. Heck, it only took the Injustice Dept.
a year to cut the check.
