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

[Milton Mueller <mueller@syr.edu>]

Harald Tveit Alvestrand wrote:

> According to Phil Sbarbro, NSI's lawyer, major cybersquatters now routinely
> register thousands of names at a time

You need to clarify your definitions here. People sometimes use the term
"cybersquatter" to refer to domain name brokerages that "squat" on hundreds of
common names, such as <gambling.com> in hopes of reselling them. The term is ALSO
used to refer to registrants who squat on trademarked names. When Phil Sbarboro
refers to the automatic registration of thousands of names, he is referring to the
former--name brokerages going after common names--not the latter. I've discussed
this with him.

Name brokerages are not in the business of registering trademarks. They know
that's a losing proposition. See, e.g., http://www.igoldrush.com/faq6.htm

> 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)

I think both of us would agree that no exclusion policy can possibly prevent the
registration of substrings. We in this working group can *only* be concerned with
issues posed by the registration of <nissan.tld>  Anything more pre-empts free
speech and may even violate legitimate trademark or other rights of domain name
registrants.

Whether such substring registrations should be actionable under a DRP is another
question, but not one that we happen to be working on. It is important to stay
focused.

--Milton Mueller