At 06:17 PM 2/10/99 -0800, you wrote:
>On Wed, Feb 10, 1999 at 07:50:22PM -0500, Milton Mueller wrote:
>> Bill:
>> You are right and Crispin, as usual, is not only wrong, but manipulatively
>> wrong. WIPO's proposals have nothing to do with trademark law. They are an
>> attempt to exploit the bottleneck power of ICANN's monopoly over the name
>> space to give TM holders far more powerful rights, and a form of prior
>> restraint, over the use of domain names. They would create a new form of
>> administrative law that has no basis in any national government'
>> legislature.
>
>Actually, Milton, you are supporting my statement, and not Bill's.
>Let me spell that for you: Bill claimed that worrying about WIPO's
>procedures was a waste of time; that they could have no effect; that
>local trademark laws would be the deciding force. This, as you so
>forcefully point out, is ridiculous -- the WIPO procedures would, as
>you put it, create a new form of administrative law, and could
>certainly have an effect.
>
>To boil it down further: Bill says WIPO is irrelevant because it can
>have no effect; I say it is relevant because it can have an effect;
>you say it is relevant because it can have an effect, but the effect
>is bad.
>
>Thank you for your support. I will leave it to you to explain to
>Bill why he is wrong :-)
>
Milton: I leave it to you to explain to Kent the difference between
"would" and "will." They "would" if there were a treaty establishing
the authority of WIPO to set up a system of administrative law to
which U. S. citizens were bound, signed by the President and
ratified by the Senate. Now exactly which treaty did that? And in
which other countries represented on this list has such a treaty
been set up and ratified? To set up WIPO as the administrative
body that it is is not to give it authority to mess with the substantive
law of the countries that set it up. And mandatory arbitration of
domain name disputes would mess with U. S. trademark law, as
well as that of all other countries. I won't get into the difference
between common and registration trademark law countries, but
I don't believe that anyone gave authority to WIPO (or to ICANN,
for that matter) to mess with over 200 years of U. S. history,
and even longer histories elsewhere.
Bill Lovell
