[ifwp] Re: yet another lame trademark issue

[Mikki Barry]

>At 04:50 PM 1/22/99 -0500, you wrote:
>It is not necessary that the word be "ENFORCED" in order to create havoc.
>The following
>was filed by me in the U. S. District Court (Oregon) on Sept. 9, 1997.

>>
>"[t]he existence of this spate of cases derives not so much from legal
>principles as it
>does from the policy of Network Solutions, Inc. (�NSI�), OPPOSITION Exhibit
>D, which
>forces its domain name holders, upon complaint from a registered trademark
>owner,
>either to abandon their domain names or expend substantial sums of money
>that many
>of them do not have in defending their registrations, with only a copy of
>the trademark
>registration and the word of the trademark owner being required as to
>whether or not
>the domain name actually infringes the trademark."
>
>And we're not talking peanuts here, but six figures and, as you can see
>from the dates
>a whole lot of time.
>That case we won and is now on appeal -- see http://cerebalaw.com/intnet.htm.
>The case is now on appeal in the 9th Circuit as previously noted.
>
>Illegitimas noncarborundum.

You'll get zero argument from me that NSI's dispute policy is unfair. In fact, DNRC was created as the direct result of NSI's dispute policy. And the expansion of that policy via WIPO is probably going to be even worse than NSI's policy. Between that, and the stated objectives of DNSO.org including "(3) other related subjects, including the relationship between the rights of trademark owners and the rights of domain name registrants" I am quite concerned that freedom of expression and other important concepts will be left by the wayside in the rush to protect trademark owners' rights at the expense of all else.

These issues should be settled by the courts, not by WIPO, not by a DNSO, not by ICANN, and certainly not by registries or registrars.

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