Re: [wg-b] Response to Milton M.

[Harald Tveit Alvestrand <Harald@alvestrand.no>]

At 18:03 02.09.99 -0500, eileen kent wrote:
>At 06:21 PM 9/2/99 -0400, you wrote:
> >
> >
> >eileen kent wrote:
> >> I believe that the dispute reolution
> >> policy will do much to minimize the wholesale, blatant fraud that goes on
> >> routinely.
> >
> >Do you have any factual evidence, other than the irritation and crocodile
>tears
> >of the trademark lobby, that "wholesale, blatant fraud" happens
>"routinely"? I
> >have studied this from an academic standpoint and I don't agree. I think
> >cybersquatting was a temporary problem that emerged in 96 and 97 when 
> the law
> >was unclear and when NSI was not charging for domains for some time. 
> There is
> >strong evidence that the problem is declining and that it composes a very
>tiny
> >percentage of all domains registered.

According to Phil Sbarbro, NSI's lawyer, major cybersquatters now routinely 
register thousands of names at a time - and PAY for the registrations.
It is clearly a tiny percentage of domain names registered, but it's a 
significant irritant.

At the WIPO experts' meeting, registrations containing "nissan" as a 
substring were listed; about 400 of them. Of the 30 (I think?) new ones 
registered during the month of January 1998, for which registration details 
were listed, about 10 seemed to belong to companies in the name business, 
not the car business. (The other 2/3 were either probable Nissan car 
dealerships or unidentifiable)

The problem has not gone away.

                         Harald

--
Harald Tveit Alvestrand, Maxware, Norway
Harald.Alvestrand@maxware.no