iplawyer writes:>In other words, cases.web would not
infringe cases.com unless cases.com was trademarked.<
Not so, see the information
on proceedings:
http://www.icann.org/udrp/udrp.htm
In particular but not limited
to the americansingle case.
Cases.com could also apply for a trademark to block
you after the fact, see the eresolution case for example, which is particularily
egregious as eresolution is one of ICANN's appointed arbiters.
The way the UDRP
panels work is they build on their own precedents. As there is no appeal procedure,
no court of appeals, no supreme court, there is no way to remove bad precedent. As
the learned panelists are neither elected nor appointed by a democratically elected
body, there is no way for the internet community to constrain them from blithely
wandering off additional cliffs.
For an exhaustive but still incomplete listing
of US caselaw see:
http://www.perkinscoie.com/resource/ecomm/netcase/Cases-08.htm
To say nothing of the additional confusion that caselaw in other countries brings
to the mix. Hence the suggestion that trademark holders be given a .reg, a commercial
area, so that judges, some of whom have never been online or even used a computer,
don't micromanage (and almost certainly mismanage) the net namespace.