Aeon,
Good reply to the wrong message. While your words should be well marked by the "Domain Abuse" thread, this thread was concerned with the use of d20 in a domain name, and that IS a trademark protected phrase. I think Ryan was right that only a trained IP attorney would have a valid answer. All we could do is make educated guesses.
Bob
B-)
-----Original Message-----
From: Aeon [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]
Sent: Thursday, January 25, 2001 12:32 PM
To: ogf-d20-l
Subject: Re: [ogf-d20-l] Re: d20 Domains
Arguing this in any sort of legal fashion is in my opinion going ot be
fruitless. It's been established in numerous cases that a domain name is not a
trademark in and of itself. You must take steps to protect your trademark, and
then if the trademark is used in a domain name, it's protected in some fashion.
Nowhere on the opengamingfoundation.org site (as I write this) is there anything
close to a trademark notice about the Open Gaming Foundation name being
trademarked by anyone. Seeing as there is no trademark notice, and seeing as the
name itself is constructed of common dictionary words, this is a weak case for a
trademark attorney to try to fight. You're talking months and months before
you'd see any resolution, not to mention legal fees. It would be silly.
That said, I think anyone who registers a domain name similar to another, simply
to redirect that domain to their own stuff, is being an ass. If you're not going
to contribute to the open spirit of Open Gaming, then you shouldn't be a part of
any of this. If it weren't about Open Gaming I might feel differently.
My own personal recommendation would be to skip the legal stuff and talk this
out on the phone. I mean, come on guys. This is stupid. Please. Just frickin
link all the opengamingfoundation.* sites to each other from their front pages
and call it a draw. This is childish. This is not why I joined this list.
As for Trademark law and its relation to domain names, you might want to check
out http://www.rjg.com/basf.html
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://www.iconoclast.org
