On 08-Mar-99 Martin B. Schwimmer wrote:
> If someone learns of a web version of this case, please post the url. I
> didn't reprint the entire thing because I didn't have the entire thing in
> electronic form.
>
> In any event, this case supports the view that a domain name in the form
> [third party trademark].undifferentiated TLD is not protectable speech on
> its face, and a tribunal could make such a finding in an expedited
> proceeding.
>
> Enhancing the protection of free speech on the net could be achieved by
> non-commercial TLDs which helped make a communicative message out of the DN
> - [xyz].sucks, [xyz].crit, [xyz].anon, [xyz].speech. In the .com TLD, for
> the form [xyz].com where xyz is a third-party trademark, the free speech
> defense seems pretty specious in most cases.
This is the danger of mandatory ADR at this point. Conflicting decisions, and
a WIPO oriented ADR procedure is likely to use a single case such as this as a
basis for their decisions. It takes more than on decision by one court to
flesh out this issue.
Enforcing mandatory ADR at this junction is dangerous for this very reason.
The fact that a precedent of a single decision can be uniformly applied as a
basis for removal of one's right to use a domain name.
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E-Mail: William X. Walsh <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: 08-Mar-99
Time: 15:17:58
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"We may well be on our way to a society overrun by hordes
of lawyers, hungry as locusts."
- Chief Justice Warren Burger, US Supreme Court, 1977
