Sotiris writes:>But, I also recognize the legitimacy
of concerns that trademark in the conventional (nay, traditional) sense presents
many problematic situations when applied to the Internet.<
Quite true. However,
this hasn't stopped TM holders from using the courts, going back at least 5 years.
Nor has this been limited to SLD names, see:
http://www.syix.com/emu/index.htm
Likewise
they repeatedly used the old NSI dispute policy, and now use the UDRP with the number
of filings increasing substantially. Short of some definitive cross-border legal
ruling that TM =/= SLD in any situation, or ICANN removing the UDRP and dissolving
the IPC, this is an issue that will never go away.
>These concerns represent important
considerations, which however are not truly a part of the ICANN mandate as I understand
their purpose.<
I agree.
>Hence, the trademark issue, although an important one
(maybe even the most important)really has no place in ICANN activities.<
Unfortunately,
there will be no definitive trans-national legal ruling, not in this decade anyway.
Nor will ICANN cease to listen to the IPC, nor should they (though to my mind they
give them both ears).
The best of a bad lot of solutions to this for the rest
of the great unwashed seems to be .reg or some permutation thereof. This shouldn't,
I would argue can't, wait until it is tried at some lower level, the vast bulk of
disputes are about gTLD names, not those within ccTLDs. The latter is becoming an
increasing problem and can also be addressed via ccTLD .reg's.
Unless there is
a gTLD .reg and/or a series of them (eg: .travel) soon, and unless there are also
TLD's that don't have onerous restrictions for the vast majority who don't own TMs
as part of the same rollout, then the IPC will have succeeded in turning the web
into the equivalent of a strip mall, where only their ads are shown, where you can
only buy their products, where the rent and lease agreements are too steep for anyone
else.
As with the Terminix case above, and the etoy situation, and numerous others,
such tactics probably cost them far more in goodwill than they would gain even had
they won. They remind me of the Wile E. Coyote cartoon character, flattened by a
steamroller they run back to see what happened and are run over again. The light
at the end of the tunnel is an oncoming cluetrain. Gnutella, freenet, name.space,
the nextgen of a decentralized net, are already on the horizon, and if the old and
slow don't get it, and if ICANN throws its lot with them, then those of us who toil
in your digital factories will drop electron monkey wrenches in your gears and route
around you.
Beep Beep!... . . . . .
. .
.