Milton Mueller wrote:- <snip>
> My understanding of your position is that pizza-hut.<anything> is a
>violation of their rights. Whether or not that is really your position,
that
>certainly IS going to be the position of Pizza Hut's trademark lawyers.
That has
>been the position of big TMOs with respect to .net, .org, etc.
>So, no, there are no new issues posed by expanding the TLD space.
This shows the difficulties of trying to discuss very complex problems with
a set of people who have very different levels of knowledge and
understanding of the subject - there is a danger of being reduced to
simplistic and misleading examples.
Those trade mark owners such as, say, Nike or perhaps Pizza Hut, who
believe that their names are so famous that anyone using them in whatever
line of business is doing so to trade off their goodwill, are only a small
subset of trade mark owners. There are many other trade marks, such as
PRINCE (which is owned and used by quite separate organisations for canned
fish, sportwear, computer software, and music to name but a few, and by
different companies in different countries. It seems likely that where
many businesses are trading under the same mark, that expanding TLD space
would be quite helpful. You could even follow the divisions of the 42
internationally agreed trade mark classes.
The problem of domain names is actually very similar to the problem of
registered company names, and in the UK at least, has been treated in a
very similar way by the courts. The One in a Million case was on all fours
with a previous case, where an oppportunist registered the company name
Glaxo-Wellcome, correctly predicting that after the merger of two
pharmaceutical companies the merged company would want that name, and
hoping to make some money out of it.
Conversely, if someone in good faith chooses a company name (or domain
name) which happens to be the same as a trade mark, whether or not there is
an infringement of trade mark will generally depend upon how it is used,
and the effect of that use.
