At 04:55 PM 2/9/99 -0800, you wrote:
>
>On 10-Feb-99 Martin B. Schwimmer wrote:
>> Write a post asking for working together to harmonize, and they reply with
>> "drop dead."
>> If there were several thousand instances in three years of TM owners
>> complaining to phone companies regarding trademark conflicts as to how
>> 1-800 numbers were allocated, the situations would be analogous (I am not
>> referring to conflicts as to the scarcity of desired 1-800 numbers). I
>> doubt there have been more than five reported cases regarding the trademark
>> use of telephone numbers in the past ten years. There are five reported
>> cases regarding DNs and TMs a month these days.
>
>I put forth that the reason conflicts dont exist in the case of 1-800 numbers
>is because it is well known that such "conflicts" will not be accomodated.
>
>And in fact, that is the practice.
>
>> The collision with the pre-existing body of rights known as trademark
>> rights is an externality of the business of selling domain names. The DNS
>> can take responsibility for this externality and work to minimize the
>> externality - or they are, to put the best face on it, bad citizens.
>
>Any rules which automatically require a user to ceritify they will not use
this
>name to violate a trademark is a violation of their fundamental rights. They
>have a right, under law, to use the name in any fashion unless proven by the
>trademark holder, in a court of law, that their use violates the trademark
>holders' rights.
>
>I have asked in the past, and I ask again, WHY SHOULD TRADEMARKS HOLD GREATER
>PROTECTION IN CYBERSPACE THEN THEY DO IN ANY OTHER MEDIUM?
>
>What is so unique about Cyberspace that requires a special set of extra legal
>rules and a limit on the free rights of domain name holders?
Exactly. That is precisely the argument I've made in the case of Interstellar
Starship Services v. Epix, Inc., in the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. With any
luck, my client will prevail and this debating can get resolved. The case has
more than a passing reference to NSI, by the way. :-)
Bill Lovell
>
