A.M. Rutkowski wrote:
>Carl,
>
>
>There is no "world's famous mark practice". The US has a vague list of
>eight non-binding factors which is a judge is free to use or ignore as the
>
>
>Very useful, succinct "marks in a nutshell" summary.
>
>Another dimension of this that came up yesterday at the CATO
>gathering, and remains an enigma, is why famous mark owners
>seem focussed singularly on character strings embedded only
>somewhere in the Second Level portion of a host name.
>
>porsche.com or porscheautos.com are apparently a problem.
>
>porsche.autos.com, porsche.va.us, porsche.netmagic.com
>http://www.netmagic.com/posche/ are apparently not problems.
>
>Have you discovered what the underlying analyses or
>tests are here?
>
>
>--tony
The reasons for this discrepancy are obvious to anyone with any working
knowledge of the Internet. They are twofold:
1) Trademark enforcement against DNS names at levels below those assigned
by TLD registries, or against directory names used within Web sites, is a
practical impossibility. The vast majority of names at these levels are
assigned for private use by the holders of the parent domain name, not by
publicly accessible registries.
2) In part because of point 1, consumers' beliefs about the ownership of
Web sites and e-mail addresses are typically based on the second-level
domain names (or third-level for registries that do not directly delegate
SLDs), not domain names at lower levels or directory names. The likelihood
of consumer confusion based on these names is consequently too small to
concern most trademark holders.
