Re: [nc-udrp] WIPO 2 Report - INN's

[Dan Steinberg <synthesis@videotron.ca>]

Well said!
From my limited sampling of my children's friends and classmates I would
estimate that somewhere between the ages of 7 and 9, children today develop
more sophisticated searching techniques than adding dot com to a name. The
first time they do research on something, and fail (for example) to find
information on toucans by going to toucan.com, toucans.com and giving up and
end up asking a parent, schoolmate or teacher...they solve their problem.  And
the risk of them associating toucan.com with the hypothecal generic drug
toucancil is nil. zero customer (or pre-customer) confusion risk here, so why
solve a problem that doesn't exist?

What scares me is GAC asking to reserve country names, WHO asking to reserve
drugs, sooner or later everything will be reserved and we will be left with a
series of monstrous bureacracies. And as Katrina so eloquently points out, it
won't stop people from using it in metatags, etc.

Katrina Burchell wrote:

> Below are my thoughts on the INN debate
>
> 1)  firstly looking at it as a consumer - if I wanted to find something
> out about a product on the Internet I might start with a search engine
> that told me about Ibuprofen, for example.  A search at Google.com takes
> me to a site http://www.rxlist.com/cgi/generic/ibup.htm which gives some
> basic information.  I might also look at some of the other sites and find
> out what I want to know, particular with regard to what it is, what it
> does and who manufacturers it.  Like all information on the web I am more
> likely to find credible the information which is presented well, comes
> from a reliable source and doesn't bombard me with adverts for unrelated
> matters or porn sites!  A lot of this information is also available on
> pack and product leaflets.  As a consumer I couldn't care less who owns
> the domain name so long as it leads me to the information I am looking
> for, if it doesn't I will go somewhere else.
>
> 2)  now with my trade mark attorney hat on, I think many of the
> commentators to this report were in favour of protecting INNs because they
> are IP specialists.  WIPO naturally attracts those sort of commentators.
> The prohibition of the exact registration of the INN is, in my view a
> waste of time.  It will not stop people using it as keywords, metatags,
> text etc and indeed why should people be prohibited from using the INN?
> If I sell cakes and own cakes.com that is my good fortune in getting the
> cakes.com domain name early and so long as the information I put on my
> site is interesting to the consumer and has something to do with cakes, so
> what that I get an advantage over other cake sellers?  Why cannot this be
> the case for the generic name in the pharmaceutical industry?  Of course
> it would make a lot of sense if the INN where it relates to a patent was
> owned by the patent holder and I can see why the big pharmaceutical
> companies would want to do that. In these cases the pharmaceutical company
> makes the suggestion as to the INN recommended name anyway so they could
> be the first to get it as they will have "insider knowledge" anyway.
>
> However, so long as the consumer is not being misled by the information on
> the site what is the problem?  Most of the people looking up this sort of
> information will be specialists anyway and will be quickly able to see if
> they are in an irrelevant site.  There is hardly a public safety issue
> here at all.
>
> 3)  if the World Health Organisation (WHO) were to own all the INNs that
> were approved what would they do with them? - are they going to put on
> reliable and public safety information about INNs? - That would seem to be
> a sensible solution - there should however be nothing to stop others
> owning for example ibuprofenboots.com or bootsibuprofen.com or any other
> variation of spelling or abbreviation of the word that commercial
> companies might want to use.
>
> 4)  where does all this stop?  why does the Pharmaceutical industry
> deserve higher protection for its generic product names?  Can we
> distinguish this from, say for example, a manufacturer who makes up an
> invented of fictitious word for an ingredient?  In the cosmetic world for
> example "liposomes" "glucasil" - is there a public safety issue there?
> The anomaly here of course is that INNs cannot be registered as trade
> marks whereas ingredient names such as these examples can be (and often
> are) by the commercial enterprises that develop them.
>
> apologies for ranting!
> regards
> Katrina
>
> (this view are personal and not those of my employer)
>
> -----Original Message-----
>
> From:   John Berryhill Ph.D. J.D. [SMTP:john@johnberryhill.com]
> Sent:   Monday, October 29, 2001 7:08 PM
> To:     nc-udrp@dnso.org
> Subject:        [nc-udrp] WIPO 2 Report - INN's
>
> I apologize in advance if this is out of order, but I believe that
> consideration of the WIPO 2 report is one of our agenda items.  The WIPO 2
> report is available at:
>
> http://wipo2.wipo.int/process2/report/
>
> One of the recommendations of the WIPO 2 report is elimination from the
> internet domain name system of International Non-proprietary Names of
> pharmaceuticals.  These names, which include such terms as "xenon",
> "testosterone", "methadone", "cesium chloride",  "sodium iodide", and the
> like, are said to pose a risk to public health and safety when registered
> as
> domain names.  There are 6,500 such INNs in five official languages, for a
> total of 32,500 terms to be banned in each TLD, or 97,500 potential domain
> names in .com, .net, and .org.
>
> The actual number of names to be cancelled is dramatically less than that,
> as
> I have just completed a study which shows 84% of English INN's to be
> unregistered as domain names in .com alone.
>
> However, due to the diversity of parties having such domain names, it may
> be
> well for anyone participating in consideration of the WIPO 2 proposal to
> have
> some familiarity with the domain name system abusers which are targeted by
> the INN proposal.  A short table is included in the WIPO 2 report, but I
> have
> found it to be oddly selective in the abusive registrants identified
> therein.
> A more comprehensive study of INN's beginning with the letter "A" is posted
> at
>
> www.johnberryhill.com/abusers.html
>
> and should provide the participants in this discussion with an opportunity
> to
> become acquainted with the identity of these abusive domain name
> registrants,
> and to resolve any conflicts of interest they may have.
>
> If WIPO's INN proposal is adopted, then additional penalties, such as a
> repayment to WIPO of administrative costs, should be imposed on
> cybersquatters who have engaged in particularly notable stockpiling of
> these
> abusive registrations, such as Glaxo SmithKline, Johnson & Johnson, ICI,
> and
> Pharmacia AB.
>
> Sincerely,
>
> John Berryhill

--
Dan Steinberg

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