Re: The Fame Claim List -was [wg-b] notification as compromise?

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

I do not deny that entities in any field of endeavour utilize lawyers for
the purpose of intimidation and I don't doubt that you have seen letters
which may be characterized as heavy-handed.  It is my understanding that
the UDRP tweaking committee has been charged with defining what constitutes
abuse of the procedure and creating disincentives for abuse of the
procedure.  Under US law, there are statutes (i.e. the Declaratory Judgment
Act, Codes of Professional Conduct for lawyers, as well as state tort law)
which would affect the contents of lawyers letters.

However, I stand by my original point that from a point of view of policing
a mark, TM owners are not interested in sending out demand letters in
situations which don't warrant it because it costs money.  Also, if the
anyone needed reminding, a debacle such as the pokey.org fiasco can cost a
great deal of goodwill.
  
I review watch notices for many of my clients and discuss the process of
watching with all my clients.  Watch services these days use computer
matching so if the mark being watched is ERNST & YOUNG it may pull up a
watch notice for THE YOUNG & THE RESTLESS.  Now when I get a watch notice
like that I put it in the circular file and when I get five like that in a
day I start getting annoyed.  I would not want each hit like that to
generate a letter to the owners of THE YOUNG & THE RESTLESS because then
they would write to me and I would have to respond to it and who has the time?

So if an entity like the MUPPETS could avoid getting into a meaningless
exchange of correspondence with SMU-PETS, they would (disclaimer that this
is a hypothetical).  That is why the notice of fame claim would need
language to mitigate unintended efffects.

As for the potential of abuse in the non-commercial TLDs, please direct
your comments to Mikki Barry.



At 12:07 PM 9/7/99 -0700, you wrote:
>> the TM owner is as interested in not unduly alarming an obviously
>> non-infringing usage as a non-infringing user is interested in not being
>> unduly alarmed.
>
>this is not supported by the tone of many letters i have seen.  i believe
>the term is "chilling effect."  and i do not really believe it is not
>intentional.  no blame.  in the current universe, tm owners have every
>incentive to be as aggressive as possible.
>
>> If certain TLDs were obviously non-commercial
>
>slime will then use this as a new flavor of 'forum shopping'.  judging use
>from name has not been very useful on the net to date.
>
>randy
>
>

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