Re: [wg-b] Recent US Case Law

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

we seem to be rapidly converging on consensus:

- famous mark exclusion has drawbacks that seem to greatly outweigh the 
benefits
   In particular, the substring problem means that exclusion is either
   ineffective or so draconian as to be very damaging to other legitimate
   rights
- a good UDRP will ease many of the problems exclusion was inteded to address
- a notification service for newly registered domains will complement the
   UDRP to give very good protection for legitimate interests that were
   intended to be protected by the famous-mark suggestion
- such a notification service can easily be provided by agencies entirely
   independent of ICANN (indeed, currently is), and therefore shouldn't be
   a matter of further concern to ICANN or its member bodies

pros & cons abound, of course, but this seems to be the basic conclusion
(and one that I'm reasonably happy with).

                           Harald



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