[ncdnhc-discuss] Board Positions on .ORG; Answers from V.Cerf -- full text

[James Love]

Michael, are you saying a registry can't have a "policy" as to what would be
considered a confusing use of a trademark on its TLD?   Does this mean the
unions (.union) could not have a policy on this, the .coop, .muesum, .aero,
etc?   It would seem to me that if the registry adopts such a policy, the
UDRP panel members should defer to this.
Jamie

----- Original Message -----
From: "Michael Froomkin - U.Miami School of Law" <froomkin at law.miami.edu>
To: "vint cerf" <vinton.g.cerf at wcom.com>
Cc: "James Love" <james.love at cptech.org>; <discuss at icann-ncc.org>;
<KathrynKL at aol.com>; "'Amadeu at nominalia. com'" <Amadeu at nominalia.com>;
"Jonathan Cohen" <jcohen at shapirocohen.com>; "Karl Auerbach"
<karl at cavebear.com>
Sent: Wednesday, March 27, 2002 11:52 PM
Subject: Re: [ncdnhc-discuss] Board Positions on .ORG; Answers from
V.Cerf -- full text


> The difficulty with this idea is that the UDRP is supposed to mirror
> national law.  We don't give guidance to panelists because they are
> supposed to follow law that comes from ELSEWHERE, not ICANN.
>
> In fact, however, US law already has a few cases where judges have
> suggested that .com is more likely to be confusing than other TLDs, so
> this distinction is a real one, at least for US law based cases.
> (However, it would be an exaggeration to say that the distinction is
> a firm one, widely accepted - it's at a just-past-nascent stage at
> present).
>
>
> On Sat, 23 Mar 2002, vint cerf wrote:
>
> > that's in interesting proposal. The trademark world tends to view any
> > potential dilution or weakening of a mark to be risky so I don't know
> > whether a formulation such as you suggest would work but it is an
> > interesting idea. Of course, one might experience abuse of such an
> > arrangement if someone registered coca-cola.org or kodak.org and
> > used the site in a way that really did cause confusion as to the
> > operator of the site, association or not with the known trademark, etc.
> > So one would also need a way to deal with that, I guess.
> >
> > Have you tried this idea out on the business constituency of DNSO?
> >
> > vint
> >
> > onAt 08:46 AM 3/23/2002 -0500, James Love wrote:
> > >I would like to offer a different way to frame the issue than one of
> > >regulating what someone does on a .org site.  By addressing the issue
of
> > >what trademark claims one can make, there will be a self selection on
.org.
> > >One can allow completely open registration on .org (the NC and ICANN
board
> > >recommendation and certainly what every registrar wants),  and not
permit
> > >any challenges to the use of a domain for any reason.   At the same
time,
> > >one can provide some guidance to the UDRP panels as to what constitutes
> > >confusion under the existing UDRP guidelines.  In particular, one make
it
> > >clear that a non-commercial use on .org is not considered confusion
with a
> > >business use that may have a trademark involving the same domain name
> > >string.     This would make the NC suggestion of "marketing" .org for
> > >non-commercial use have some content and structure, and it would have
the
> > >costs of this policy borne by those who seek to take .org domains away.
> > >
> > >If one has strong ideological reasons to oppose any differentiation of
uses
> > >of TLDs, then this will not be well received, and there may be some
other
> > >pragmatic or strategic concerns here, that have not been explained.
But I
> > >have offered this to address concerns that the NC recommendation for
.org is
> > >too vague in some areas, and to address our own concersn about NGO's
being
> > >knocked off .org domains by businesses who have similiar trademarks (as
has
> > >already happened in .net).
> > >
> > >   Jamie
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > Discuss mailing list
> > Discuss at icann-ncc.org
> > http://www.icann-ncc.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
> >
>
> --
> Please visit http://www.icannwatch.org
> A. Michael Froomkin   |    Professor of Law    |   froomkin at law.tm
> U. Miami School of Law, P.O. Box 248087, Coral Gables, FL 33124 USA
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