Let's get back to reality check...
IMHO...
If Mr. Smith moves into an address on mcdonalds.ave and sets up a
business or just lives there, he can be potentially happy.
But, if McDonalds Hamburgers comes along and says "You can't do that,
Mr. Smith, because I have the McDonalds Trademark! So you, Mr. Smith
will have to move out and let me have mcdonalds.ave before I sue you for
trademark infringment and cybersquating!
Now, Mr Smith cannot be potentially happy with that and it could cost
him big bucks! And all he did was move there because is sounded good
and/or it was convenient. Needless to say, he can't afford the $$.
Soooo, Everyone....
I said this a year ago and I bet others have said it too:
There
can't be any correlation between a street name addressing system and
trademarks. So, goes the internet addressing system as well. Duh... I
just can't comprehend what all the fuss is..
Ray Hallman standing by on the internet.
Kerry Miller wrote:
>
> Kent,
>
> { > Seriously, by any concept of 'intellectual property,' the cybersquatters
> { > are in *exactly* the same business as the TM holders: trying to
> { > capitalize on the alphabet.
> {
> { That's simply stupid. The businesses of TM holders are myriad, from
> { running a restaurant to making soft drinks to building space
> { shuttles. The business of cybersquatters is trying to sell names
> { they got under false pretenses, and frequently don't pay for.
> {
> { It costs several hundred dollars and takes a year or more to get a
> { trademark. People simply don't run around trademarking good names
> { and then trying to sell them. Instead, people get trademarks to
> { protect the identity of their real business. Protection of business
> { identity is the whole point.
> {
>
> It's easy to miss the point sometimes, so let me try again:
> weve got group A, which has physical-world connections which we might
> call 'fundamentals': trade, goodwill, inventory, etc etc. Weve got group
> B, which has virtual-world connections to certain domain names.
>
> The A's have been around for a hundred years longer than the Bs, and have
> developed a certain amount of trade law/ lore for the resolution of
> disputes. One of these is something called _trademark_ which at first
> glance *seems* like a virtual-world connection because it often looks
> just like a name, spelled in human-readable characters. But in fact, and
> in law, it still has very distinct roots in physicality: geography, the
> particular merchandise, etc. Thus numbers of As can have the same
> trademark *name* -- whereas the Bs cannot.
>
> Something like a land-rush has been going on over the past two or three
> years, with everybody, including As and Bs, going for pretty, or clever,
> or sexy, or important-sounding names as provided by the DNS. The As now
> seem to be trying to define *all domain names as important, *all domain
> names as trademarks, *all names as 'identities' -- despite, first of all,
> the obvious fact that the mapping is one-to-many and therefore absurd
> (unless something like Greg's idea of sharing names is worked out), and
> second, the empirical fact that somebody else, such as a B, has
> registered them first.
>
> OK, so maybe some sort of law-n-order has to come to the virutal
> frontier -- but being an A here has no 'standing' *except insofar as the
> As say it has*.
>
> So we have a choice: we can accept that the whole global shooting match
> is commercial; that individuals have no rights even to their own names;
> that every word in this message is liable to payment of royalties -- or
> we can preserve the commons (for once!) and develop a Code of Virtual
> Commerce which says, we're sorry you were operating under an illusion and
> that you spent so much money to 'protect the identity of your real
> business,' but ignorance of the *nondiscriminatory* nature of information
> is no excuse. Keep your trademarks where they are *really relevant.
>
> But if we do that, we're stuck with the uncomfortable implication that
> the registrant of a domain name is the registrant of a domain name, As
> and Bs right along with everyone else. Of these two alternatives, I think
> I could get used to this second one a lot easier than the first.
>
> ----
> Martin wrote, sarcastically:
>
> { The ability to
> { engineer the car, that has nothing to do with the value of the PORSCHE
> { name.
>
> Again, the *historical, dirt (-road) based value of the name is one
> thing. The *convenience of being able to type porsche in your web browser
> and so on is something else. The first has been protected by trade law
> *in order to promote trade*; the second belongs to the community of users
> and is often called freedom of speech.
>
>
> Portia, so Sue me
--
Ray Hallman [EMAIL PROTECTED]
I Love Music and Note: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Past Composers Decompose! Everyone is entitled to my Opinion!
PGP fingerprint: B2E2 0F0B 9530 F09E 167D CCF8 404F FDCE 0333 459C
