Afilias issued a gushing press release on August 23 proclaiming that .info had obtained
international acceptance based on the global distribution of trademark owners who
are attempting to avoid cybersquatting in the .info gTLD. This is akin to an airline
proclaiming its global popularity based on the distribution of people from around
the world who buy flight insurance before boarding one of their planes.Among
those trademarks held out by Afilias for special note are these: "A number of global
brands have also registered their taglines, including: wheresthebeef.info, nokiaconnectingpeople.info,
fedexpriorityovernight.info, celebratehumanity.info, and dell4me.info. "
Wait
a minute... celebratehumanity.info ? What global brand is that? If you take a look
at the whois data for celebratehumanity.info, you will find it is registered to the
International Olympic Committee on the basis of the following trademark information:
Trademark
Name: celebratehumanity
Trademark Date: 2000-10-01
Trademark Country: US
Trademark Number: 75/933196
Now, if you take a look at the uspto.gov database,
you will find that the trademark data used by the IOC corresponds to a pending intent-to-use
application, which has not yet reached registration. In fact, the application was
not even published for opposition until June 2001. People who have foolishly followed
the Afilias Sunrise rules came away with the impression that a national registration
prior to October 2000 was required in order to register during the sunrise period.
Obviously, the IOC and Afilias feel differently.
The fact that Afilias would single
this bogus registration out for special laudatory attention should provide an early
indication to how carefully Afilias intends to police the integrity of the Sunrise
process, as they promised in their press release of August 15, 2001.