Re: [ga] Register.com auto-reg's TMs in all domains, ICANN a customer

["Mark C. Langston" <skritch@home.com>]

On 16 December 1999, Harald Tveit Alvestrand <Harald@Alvestrand.no> wrote:


>
>This article has to be read carefully.
>It says that it will *watch* the mark in 260 domains, and register it *when 
>it becomes available*.
>Since many of the country domains have requirements for (for instance) 
>local presence or one-domain-per-organization, there aren't that many 
>registries where a mark is *available* per se - I believe register.com 
>lists about 20 on its homepage.
>
>Anyway, this means that exact-match exclusion in open domains is possible 
>without a famous names registry. Interesting.
>
>                          Harald

Exactly.  And I believe some people have pointed out that register.com
is not the only registrar that offers this type of for-fee service.

So, the entire discussion in WG-B is, in a sense, moot.  The pre-emptive
protection is already available to anyone willing to meet the requirements
to obtain the service.  It would therefore seem that WG-B's attempt to
exclude famous marks is nothing more than another attempt by mark owners
to avoid the cost of policing the namespace to protect their own marks.

-- 
Mark C. Langston
mark@bitshift.org
Systems Admin
San Jose, CA