Thursday, January 29, 1998, 11:10 a.m. ET.; updated January 30 Capitol Hill
Panel Discusses Internet Issues
By KATE GERWIG
Extract:
At Wednesday's panel,
Vinton Cerf, MCI's senior vice pres ident of Internet Architecture and Engineering,
praised Magaziner's efforts, adding that satisfying the needs of all stakeholders
in the issue is extremely complex.
"With respect for creating more domain names,
the strongest arguments against that come from trademark community," Cerf said. "I
have a technical observation. We screwed up--and that's a technical term--by allowing
the URL that contains the domain name to be so visible and has led industry to believe
that the only way to make products and services visible to the community. We don't
need to do that."
Instead, Cerf said trademark names should be listed in registries
that list multiple trademarks so users can look up the name and find information
about the type of business and the location of the trademark holder.
"The URL
that creates the link doesn't have to have the trademark in the name at all, it's
not technically necessary," Cerf said. "All we have to do is start creating services
that register trademarks in directories and let people lo ok them up. That doesn't
require legislation."
Cerf's comments came just two days before the Clinton administration
released its proposal to privatize the domain name system over the next two years
and add five new top-level domain names.
If URLs were not able to be trademark
specific, Cerf maintains there would be no domain name problem. "The uniqueness of
a company name is not the issue. It is the conflict between the domain name system
design, which insists on uniqueness, and the trademark system, which insists on non-uniqueness,
that creates the problem," Cerf said.
"So we solve the problem by separating those
two out and let people have multiple trademarks." Just have them have domain names
and don't use their trademark for it. That's it."
http://www.internetweek.com/news/news0129-2.htm
Vint
says, it is "the trademark system, which insists on non-uniqueness, that creates
the problem,"
HE IS WRONG - a trademark has to be unique - or else it is declared
invalid.
Quote:
A trade mark may be declared invalid on the grounds that either:
it
was registered in breach of Section 3 of the 1994 Trade Marks Act, i.e. absolute
grounds, e.g. due to a lack of distinctiveness in the mark
http://www.patent.gov.uk/tm/indetail/invalidn.htm
This
uniqueness consists of name, classification and country.
Because:
a. Every dictionary
word is trademarked
b. Trademarks 'raison d'être' - to identify source
c.
Basic tenet of trademark law - protect consumers and trademark owners from confusion
in the marketplace
d. Free speech issues
e. To guarantee source
f. For
the proper use of trademarks - to give warning, to advise the public that the mark
is registered.
Something should be used to replace the RTM on the Internet. A new
TLD of .REG will satisfy that requirement.
US DOC, UN WIPO and ICANN know all this.