[ga] ICANN - pay attention
Finally, a court decision that treats trademarks as they should be treated. They do not own the DNS and have limited rights to a mark in the DNS. It shows just how far afield the UDRP had traveled and how egregious some of their decisions have been using equally egregious prior decisions as precedents. Leah "JUDGE SAYS STRICK.COM CAN STICK WITH OWNER A federal court judge in Pennsylavania has ruled that James Strickland, the owner of strick.com, is entitled to keep his domain. The decision contains considerable discussion about the intersection of trademarks and domain names including noting "that Internet surfers are inured to the false starts and excursions awaiting them and are unlikely to be dissuaded, or unnerved, when, after taking a stab at what they think is the most likely domain name for particular web site guess wrong and bring up another's webpage" and that "It is clear that nothing in trademark law requires that title to domain names that incorporate trademarks or portions of trademarks be provided to trademark holders. To hold otherwise would create an immediate and indefinite monopoly to all famous mark holders on the Internet, by which they could lay claim to all .com domain names which are arguably 'the same' as their mark. The Court may not create such property rights-in-gross as a matter of dilution law. ... Trademark law does not support such a monopoly." Decision at http://www.strick.com/aug27.pdf " -- This message was passed to you via the ga@dnso.org list. Send mail to majordomo@dnso.org to unsubscribe ("unsubscribe ga" in the body of the message). Archives at http://www.dnso.org/archives.html |