Passionate about IP! Since June 2003 the IPKat has covered copyright, patent, trade mark, designs, info-tech and confidentiality issues from a mainly UK and European perspective. Read, post comments and participate!

The team is Eleonora Rosati, Annsley Merelle Ward and Merpel. E-mail the Kats here!

The team is joined by GuestKats Kevin Bercimuelle-Chamot, Jocelyn Bosse, Alessandro Cerri, Anastasiia Kyrylenko, Marcel Pemsel and Anna Maria Stein.

SpecialKats: Verónica Rodríguez Arguijo (TechieKat), Antonios Baris (Book Review Editor), Rose Hughes (PatKat) and Chijioke Okorie (Africa Correspondent).

InternKats: Asude Sena Moya and Söğüt Atilla.
Home / / LOOK WHAT HAPPENS...

LOOK WHAT HAPPENS...

LOOK WHAT HAPPENS... LOOK WHAT HAPPENS... Reviewed by Anonymous on Wednesday, February 08, 2006 Rating: 5

1 comment:

  1. AnonymousWednesday, 8 February 2006 at 14:12:00 GMT

    Although I didn't carefully analyze all the claims made by the author
    (I have the suspicion he didn't consider carefully enough that art.
    4(a) UDRP requires three distinct preconditions to be satisfied *at
    the same time* for a proceeding to even start) I think the points that
    are being raised in a somewhat excessive language have some merit.

    In particular, I think that basic incompatibility between the
    historical and technical "raison d'etre" of the Domain Name System and
    the corresponding elements of trademark laws around the world should
    not be underevaluated; plus, I have the impression (not corroborated
    by empirical data, I admit) that as of today most people access
    websites through third parties' services, i.e. search engines, and
    they couldn't really care less about the actual Uniform Resource
    Locator. Also, and again without any empirical data backing my
    claims, I suspect that the pattern of usage of today's web interfaces
    (mostly browsers) follow a "search engine / bookmark / clik again on
    the bookmark" cycle, therefore making the reservation of - and all the
    fuss about - a specific domain name rather useless.

    What is really relevant, in my humble opinion, is making sure that the
    goals that the trademark system wishes to preserve are maintained on
    the Internet; whether this should be done by pushing a square tool
    through a round hole, or rather by using other legal tools available
    (`passing of' doctrine in anglosaxon systems, the general defense
    available with unfair competition law in most countries including
    Italy) is an "open question" (love this meme).

    After all, what is really relevant: a small sequence of characters, or
    the actual content of a website?

    All in all, I think the proposal of Mr. "wipo.org.uk" to create a
    specific top-level domain for trademarks should be considered with
    more attention, although the basic point remains - if we accept that a
    domain name serves the same function of a trademark, then it is
    difficult to accept that the core tm-functional element of the domain
    (which is not the top level domain, generic by nature, but usually the
    second level domain, as in *apple*.com) would elicit its effects on
    the average consumer only in a specific top-level domain and not in
    all others.

    ReplyDelete

All comments must be moderated by a member of the IPKat team before they appear on the blog. Comments will not be allowed if the contravene the IPKat policy that readers' comments should not be obscene or defamatory; they should not consist of ad hominem attacks on members of the blog team or other comment-posters and they should make a constructive contribution to the discussion of the post on which they purport to comment.

It is also the IPKat policy that comments should not be made completely anonymously, and users should use a consistent name or pseudonym (which should not itself be defamatory or obscene, or that of another real person), either in the "identity" field, or at the beginning of the comment. Current practice is to, however, allow a limited number of comments that contravene this policy, provided that the comment has a high degree of relevance and the comment chain does not become too difficult to follow.

Learn more here: http://ipkitten.blogspot.com/p/want-to-complain.html

Subscribe to: Post Comments ( Atom )
Powered by Blogger.