RE: [ga] Interesting WIPO ruling re: NewZealand.biz

["Rodrigo Orenday Serrato" <rorenday@banxico.org.mx>]

Generics per se cannot be registered as trademarks, at least not under
Mexican, French nor German trademark law, in their present state. There is
an IP specialist here who declared to the press that he beleives that we
should forget about domain names altogether and go back to IP addresses, but
I don't agree with that.

However, an argument I sustained in my professional thesis on the regulation
of domain names in Mexico is the following:

1. Mexican trade & service mark and copyright laws are of public interest,
and they forbid the appropriation of generic terms, amongst others.
2. The Federal Civil Code sets forth that acts which contravene public
interest laws shall be null.
3. The registration of generics as domain names consists in an appropriation
of said terms, thus it contravenes the aforesaid laws.
4. Consequently, said registrations are null.

IP specialists here seem to agree. Constructive and reasonable comments on
the foregoing are wellcome.

Atentamente, Regards
Rodrigo Orenday Serratos



-----Mensaje original-----
De: John Berryhill Ph.D. J.D. [mailto:john@johnberryhill.com]
Enviado el: Jueves, 10 de Octubre de 2002 03:00 PM
Para: rorenday@banxico.org.mx; ppoblete@nic.cl
CC: 'Andy Gardner'; ga@dnso.org
Asunto: Re: [ga] Interesting WIPO ruling re: NewZealand.biz


>
> One of the biggest problems that I find in domain names is that the
> registration of those which include generic names and terms commonly used,
> like the name of a country, is not banned, unlike trade and service marks.

This is the first time I've seen someone arguing that there should be a ban
on generic and common terms AND trademarks.

That leaves few other choices, but maybe we should just ban registering
domain names entirely.


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