[wg-b] Some additional questions

["Martin B. Schwimmer" <martys@interport.net>]

a) What is the status of national and international famous marks legislation 
today -- compared the trademark infringement, is the dilution/famous marks 
concept as widely or well accepted?

The concept of protection of famous marks is larger than the concept
embodied in Section 43(c) of the US Lanham Act - so that the
"dilution/famous marks concept" is a sub-set of famous marks doctrine.
Given that protection of famous marks is provided for in the Paris
Convention and GATT/TRIPS, the protection of famous marks is a treaty
obligation in the overwhelming majority of trademark jurisdictions.

See gopher://gopher.law.cornell.edu/00/foreign/fletcher/UNTS11851.txt for
the text of the Paris Convention, see www.wto.org for information on the
incorporation of Article 6bis of the Paris Convention into the TRIPS accord).

Dilution is not as widely an accepted doctrine as infringement.  However it
can be argued that what a US court might deem to be dilution, another
country might deem to be infringement, passing off or some species of
unfair competition.  A common element in the protection of trademarks is
the doctrine that bad faith will be a grounds for rejecting a trademark
application.  An important concept in famous marks protection is the belief
that the fame of a mark can create an inference that an application has
been filed in bad faith.


b) How was the famous marks/Chapter 4 section accepted by the panel of 
experts, and what concerns if any did they have?


c) What are the concerns or dangers of adopting the WIPO Chapter 4 proposals 
for the domain name activities of noncommercial, small business and 
individual domain name holders?

What is the underlying assumption that the concerns would be different to
these groups than they would be to other groups?




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