LOOK WHAT HAPPENS...

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

1 comment:

  1. 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

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