Fine and dandy, but the only other trademark lawyers on this list--the ones who
have handled more litigation in this area than you have--agree with me.
So your pretense that this is a matter of expertise is dishonest, and obviously so
to anyone who follows the discussion.
I look forward to what kind of rationalizations you can concoct to explain away
Professor Froomkin's reduction of the WIPO report to a heap of smoking rubble.
Probably he's dishonest, too?
Martin B. Schwimmer wrote:
> Mueller refers to my blatnat irrationality and talks about how greedy pizza
> hut would be if someone obtained pizza-hut.co.na and concludes:
>
> > It certainly bears no
> >relationship to trademark law.
>
> You know, reasonable folks can differ on these issues, but after a certain
> point all that's left for me to say is that you are a professor of
> communications and have been dabbling in the trademark debate for a little
> while (dishonestly in my personal opinion), and I am an international
> trademark attorney and have handled trademark matters in probably over a
> hundred different countries. You want to spout about markets, fine, but
> when it comes to trademark law, you simply don't know what you are talking
> about.
>
> >
> >--MM
> >
> >Martin B. Schwimmer wrote:
> >
> >> >>Also, in response to Martin Schwimmer:
> >> >>
> >> >>>In other words, if you added .inc, .ltd., .firm, .shop and .store
> >> >>>tomorrow, then anonymous folks could tomorrow register ebay.inc,
> >> >>>ebay.ltd, ebay.firm, ebay.shop and ebay.store, all of which, in my
> >> >>>humble but professional opinion, are likely to create confusion with
> >> >>>our friends over at ebay.com.
> >> >>
> >> >>This seems to be a reasonable concern, given that there is already
> >> >>quite a bit of registration of companies in ccTLDs. Wouldn't the
> >> >>companies who are interested in having those names in all (or even
> >> >>most) TLDs pursue the same avenues they are pursuing in the existing
> >> >>gTLDs?
> >> >>
> >> >>--gregbo
> >> >
> >> If I understand your question correctly:
> >>
> >> TM owners are utilizing services like netnames or namestake to obtain as
> >> many ccTLD versions of their TMs as they can reasonably afford, although it
> >> adds up - especially since a company may need to acquire several names in a
> >> particular ccTLD (because of reserved second level DNs (i.e. .co.jp). But
> >> that's just for one trademark. Many companies have more than one trademark
> >> or trading name they may wish to protect. And if the company's trademark
> >> consists of two words and they have to worry about variants
> >> (pizzahut.co.jp, pizza-hut.co.jp, pizzahut.jp, pizza-hut.jp) a block-out
> >> strategy becomes economically impossible for all but the largest companies.
> >> (note the irony that an original appeal of a gTLD was that you only needed
> >> one name and anybody in the world could get in touch with you).
> >>
> >> So if there was a huge number of undifferentiated gTLDS requiring
> >> registration of pizzahut.firm, pizza-hut.firm, etc., well, let's put it one
> >> way. Pizza Hut would likely oppose such a scenario and you couldn't
> >> criticize them for not putting ORSC's interests first. (p.s. The views
> >> expressed herein are not necessarily those of Pizza Hut, which was the
> >> first well known two word trademark I could think of. When in New York,
> >> you may wish to try pizza at John's, with locations on Bleeker Street in
> >> the Village and one on the West Side off Columbus).
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
