>Many countries have no commercial law to speak of, and of those that do, IP
>complaints are regularly flouted with a wink from the government. In China
>and other places, it's an entire industry. These "forums" have not just not
>worked fine, they haven't worked at all.
These countries would not sign onto a WIPO treaty then, and could not
enforce any policies over registries located in their countries anyway.
And the problem of consumer confusion in a country with a country code from
one of these countries would likely be recognized as something that isn't
necessarily the "real thing" if their intellectual property laws are so
lax. I still don't see the need for WIPO or ICANN to attempt to enforce
something that probably can't be enforced.
Further, I do not believe that one policy across ALL TLDs will serve the
ccTLDs, the commercial TLDs and the non-commercial TLDs well at all. Each
has different needs and policies.
>
>For trademark owners whose names have been pirated, often for resale to the
>owners, there is nothing to do but (a) try to get the registry to do
>something, which is often unavailing, or (b) try to buy it back.
Is this a serious problem in ccTLDs of countries without proper
intellectual property laws?
>
>This *is* a problem. It's a common problem, I can attest to that from the
>personal experience of having negotiated with registries and domain holders
>in hundreds of cases. Just because Milton Mueller didn't bother to include
>them in his "Syracuse University Study" doesn't mean they don't exist. I
>built a million-dollar business based on corporations paying me good money
>just to register names for them all over the world because it's cheaper to
>do so than pay pirates or go through non-existent legal channels. They
>would have been happy to work with their .com domain only except for piracy,
>and most of them came to me only after they had been contacted for ransom.
>The fact that it's a problem for a group you've compared to slaveowners
>doesn't make it less so. In most places, there is no law to deal with it.
>You can say, oh, too bad for those rich bastards, but they do have
>legitimate interests. If you don't want trademark owners interfering in
>every little DNS detail, you have to make provision for the big concern they
>do have.
Wasn't Milton's study US based?
Further, please tell me why trademark owners should be interfering in
"every little DNS detail?" You have iterated one problem in some
countries. I would postulate that for every case you have, I have one from
a domain name holder who is being reverse hijacked. So we should take the
small problem of cyberpiracy and expand it into allowing some trademark
owners (not all mind you because I am a trademark holder) to "interfere in
every little DNS detail?" I certainly hope not.
Trademark owners should not have special privilege on the Internet that
they don't enjoy in any other medium. Nor should they have special
privilege in determining the direction of a TECHNICAL body, the DNSO.
>
>If you don't want trademarks to exist, maybe you should try the appropriate
>legal forums to abolish them. Until then, trademarks do exist, their owners
>have legitimate concerns. Telling them to go screw themselves is the best
>way to make sure that corporate America does its damndest to get involved in
>protecting their interests through the DNS.
Oh please. I am a trademark lawyer. Why would I want trademarks not to
exist. You are again comparing apples and oranges. Trademarks are NOT
domain names, and domain names are NOT trademarks. The USE of the domain
name, under current law is dispositive. Not its existance. Nobody is
telling them to "screw themselves." What I am saying is that there are
already avenues for trademark holders who are legitimately being harmed to
remedy the situation. The fact that there is only one .com will be
alleviated when there are more gTLDs, especially if one is set aside solely
for trademark holders in which a group like INTA or WIPO can make the
rules. If there are other TLDs for personal use or other non commercial
speech, that would certainly alleviate their immediate concern, n'est ce
pas?
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