> Willie Brown possibly has superior rights to williebrown.com,
> williebrownjr.com and damayor.com vis a vis Andy Hasse because Mr. Hasse
> appears to have obtained domain names likely to be associated with Willie
> Brown, the mayor of San Francisco, possibly in a way calculated to harm
> Mayor Brown (Mr Hasse's employment by Mayor Brown's rival is relevant to
> this analysis). Possible theories include rights of publicity, common law
> trademark, false advertising, interference with prospective advantage, and
> unfair competition
In other words, Mayor Brown has lots of rights under existing law to go
after the other person. He needs no assistance from anything new in the
domain name space, existing law provides more than adequate protection.
So if Willy can demonstrate under existing laws that there is a violation
to his right of publicity, common law trademark, that the other use is
false advertising or interferes with a prospective advantage, or is unfair
competion, then fine.
It appears that we need not add any special new rules in the domain name
arena to deal with this situation.
--karl--
