At 12:30 PM 1/4/99 -0800, Kent Crispin wrote: >Another terrible lack is some attempt to deal with the unreported >cases. Carl Oppedahl has made some wild estimates -- you cite him, >but the fact that you don't reference his estimates (which, as I >recall, indicate that the number of unreported cases was fairly >large, and thus not supporting your conclusions) makes one wonder >why... Nope, I have not made even one wild estimate. My comments are based on personal knowledge of many, many trademark domain name disputes. The real problem here is that while regular courts conduct their activities on an open record, NSI does not. NSI conceals its actions in thousands of domain name disputes and fights fiercely whenever anyone tries to see what decisions they have made in such disputes. For those of us who wish to comment knowledgeably upon this subject, the unhappy result of NSI's secretiveness is that we are reduced to trying to draw what we can from the paucity of publicly available information, or (in my case) upon personal knowledge of many, many real-life cases. Your recollection is apparently in error. I don't believe anything I have posted has drawn into question Prof. Mueller's conclusions. The reality is that domain names ought not to be much different from toothpaste packages. If a trademark owner doesn't like a toothpaste package, they go to court and try to convince a judge that it's an infringement and try to get it stopped. The same is true if a trademark owner doesn't like the *content* of an Internet web site. But in this special case of a gripe against a *domain name* in and of itself, it continues to puzzle me that people think trademark owners need "special relief", and that the courts aren't good enough. The vast majority of domain name disputes that I have seen (and I have seen dozens in detail and hundreds in general terms) are nothing like real trademark cases. They are cases where somebody covets another domain name, has no real legal claim over it, but uses NSI's policy to try to get it. Only a tiny handful of the cases I have seen are bona fide trademark cases, for example where one party has a coined unique trademark like "intermatic" or "panavision". In those handful of cases, the courts have proven to be a more than adequate way for the trademark owner to get relief. __________________________________________________ To receive the digest version instead, send a blank email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To SUBSCRIBE forward this message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To UNSUBSCRIBE, forward this message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Problems/suggestions regarding this list? Email [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___END____________________________________________
