Roeland,
I find this issue (Trademark vs. DNS) very interesting and important, but I
disagree on the fact that this is the key difference on the two drafts.
In fact, this (Trademark vs. DNS) will be one of the endless debates within
the DSNO, if and when it will be formed, but is not a divide on the
implementation of the DNSO itself, except for the fear of giving the
Trademark lawyers too much power.
But anyway, getting into the subject, Vint Cerf wrote:
> >
> >roughly what I said is that domain names must be unique (that is,
> >only only target "host" can have a given domain name) but that
> >trademarks, because of the way they are granted, can be applied
> >to more than one entity (product, service). It is not uncommon
> >that a telecommunications service company and a bus manufacturing
> >company having the same trademarked corporate name - MCI in one
> >case. Because of the ambiguity of trademarks, their use in
> >domain names leads to a fundamental conflict because there can
> >be only one entity that can use, e.g. mci.com, as a domain name.
> >
>
It is even worse that that.
A trademark is not only a string of ASCII characters, it is (potentially) a
logo that is immediately recognizable even for people that do not read.
I don't know if you have the same spot in the States, but in France
McDonalds show a baby on a swing (about two years old), that sees the
McDonalds yellow-and-red logo otside the windows. As the swing swings, he
sees it only for part of the time, and he smiles when he sees it, and cries
when he doesn't.
The message is clear: the "trademark" is recognizable by a baby.
The DNS, for the time being, is restricted to strings of ASCII characters,
and is not able to to distinguish between two companies with different logo,
but same char string.
Regards
Roberto
