At 09:02 AM 2/2/99 -0500, you wrote:
>[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
>>
>> Maybe the policy has discouraged people from registering
>> trademarked names. This of course is just a hypothesis. It
>> would be difficult to substantiate.
>
>I don't disagree with that hypothesis, but I think there's more to it.
>
>It's likely that, early on, the large part of the existing population of
>trademark holders moved to defend itself against cybersquatters and
>name-nappers. This community would have used any means available, though
>NSI's was one that particularly suited its interests.
>
>More importantly, I would expect to find that there was a learning curve
>among existing and expectant trademark holders, who recognized the need
>to register an SLD as soon as possible, thus pre-empting the occasions
>for disputes in the current period. Also, I know of several anecdotal
>cases where lawyers for big companies sent out very nasty letters to
>domain holders threatening action, and induced a quick registration
>transfer. (There must be lots of POKEY-type incidents we don't know
>about.) That's part of the learning curve as well.
>
>If this hypothesis is correct, then other legal entities would probably
>be seeing a correlating drop off in contended name disputes. Can the
>legal folks here say whether that is true? Is the domain name litigation
>business booming, holding steady, or declining?
>
>
>Craig Simon
>
It's multi-factorial. A lot of the factors you cite are accurate. By now
most of the Fortune 1000 probably has the .com version of their names - the
blackmail ahs already been piad. TM owners register their TM as a DN
before announcing, however some don't (do a whois on exxon/mobil, bt/att
and rothmans/bat).
The speculators adapt too. They know that an identical sld will get
suspended so they register a variant (do a whois on data arts for an
example). OR they do clever tricks to foil NSI (which I will not broadcast).
Also, there is name-grabbing in the ccTLDs. I would interested in seeing
statistics o nthat point - I have a suspicion that that will be a larger
problem in years to come. Not only TM owners can do an all ccTLD search now.
Also, the dispute can move to another level - with the advent of
keywords/real names like technology you have disputes such as that
described on the netscapesucks.com page. also there was the scripting.com
matter (the "keywords" disputes have nothing to do with NSI - they only
illustrate that DNS workarounds can create problems as well).
Then there are garden variety non-DNS problems - word stuffing,
meta-tagging, framing - I though people would get bored but it really happens.
When you indicated that there were a lot of incidents that are not made
public, you are absolutely correct - this is one of the reasons why the
Mueller study where in he projected his "results" against the NSI total was
inaccurate - a great many disputes generate no media coverage, court
decision, or NSI statistic created - and are often resolved pursuant to a
confidentiality agreement.
Our firm has seen no drop off in contended name disputes.
>
>
