To which I would add another type of IP
-- that of the .com brand.
It is no small matter that .com is the
defacto namespace for commercial interests.
That is a branding success, more than
anything else.
Easy access, easy registration policies,
a huge reseller channel, significant
investments in infrastructure, marketing,
etc. have given NSI their huge market share.
I suspect that, had any of the ccTLDs
been as competitive in the marketplace,
NSI would not have the market share
it does today.
Jay.
At 08:52 PM 7/23/99 , Karl Auerbach wrote:
>
>> > We should expect a
>> > long hard fought legal battle...coming soon. I do not understand how the
>> > folks at NTIA could have made this error (if, indeed, they did) since
>> > the DOC did not have the constitutional authority to transfer a database
>> > held in "public trust" over to a private corporation.
>>
>> 5 years ago, hardly anybody had heard of 'intellectual property' ...
>> But if the DoC overstepped its authority, does the public have
>> standing to sue for its IP rights?
>
>There is a lot of fuzzyness going on about the term "IP rights" in the
>zone and contact databases.
>
>Clearly NSI has physical possession of the databases and nobody has the
>right to break into their buildings or computers and take a copy (or the
>original).
>
>There may or may not be copyright rights in those databases -- the
>uncertainly is because under a relatively recent US Supreme Court case,
>collections of facts are, absent something special, not copyrightable.
>
>However, there is more recent US Federal legislation on these matters
>about which I know abysmally less than nothing (but about which I'm sure
>that somebody will fill us in. ;-)
>
>Thus, the existance or not of a copyright based Intellectual Property
>right in the databases is something that is arguable.
>
>However, as I said, even if the data is "public domain", that does not
>give one the right to make copies unless one has the right to physically
>access the data.
>
>The NSF/NTIA-NSI Cooperative Agreement does give NTIA some rights to
>obtain copies of some of these databases (I claim it gives 'em rights to
>all of the databases, NSI and others claim otherwise) at the termination
>of the Cooperative agreement.
>
>Throw all this into a barrel and we have a lot of ambiguity about what
>people mean when they talk about the IP rights in the various databases in
>NSI's hands.
>
>Precision is really important -- one needs to be very clear about which
>database (e.g. root zone file, TLD zone file, contact database, etc),
>about which kind of access is being discussed, and about which kind of IP
>property right (if any) is being discussed.
>
> --karl--
>
Respectfully,
Jay Fenello
President, Iperdome, Inc.� 404-943-0524
-----------------------------------------------
What's your .per(sm)? http://www.iperdome.com
