[wg-b] Re: Arbitration (RE: (wg-b) food for thought)

[Judith Oppenheimer <joppenheimer@icbtollfree.com>]

Sarah, forget the other side of the coin - that reverse domain name hijacking is
also a huge and growing problem, perpetrated against smaller entities with much
less power yet so much more to lose ...

Fact is, you are *already* sans protection ... the Registrar Accreditation
Policy language played out in your contract as "you have no rights in your
domain names", doesn't distinguish between tm owner and not ...

Your trademark rights are more violated by the domain name rights you sign over
to ICANN with your contract, than by any nuisance cybersquatter you could easily
squash in court  ...

Judith

P.S.  I've mentioned before that I also represent trademark owners ... I'm as
interested in protecting and promoting the interests of my trademark
owning-clients as you are in protecting your's, and I have grave concerns about
the degree to which their domain name rights are already rescinded ...

"DEUTSCH, SARAH B." wrote:

>
> I thought we were supposed to working on protecting famous marks in this
> working
> group.  The proactive exclusion can and will work.  I believe that a
> qualified
> expert group of decisionmakers, using the WIPO standards, can come up with a
>
> list of famous marks.  There should be no overall cap -- because famous
> marks
> are always in the making.  The proactive exclusion would apply to the exact
> mark
> or extremely close variations (e.g., BellAtlantic.firm, Bell-Atlantic.firm)
> and
> would afford the trademark owner the right to secure its essential, famous
> name
> in the new gTLD space.  Otherwise, what you are arguing is that
> "entrepreneurs"
> should have the right to confuse customers and engage in consumer fraud by
> stealing exact duplications of famous marks in the new name spaces. There
> already appear to be plenty of "business opportunities" for "entrepreneurs"
> who
> steal variations of famous marks at their own peril. Bell Atlantic submitted
>
> documented evidence of the more than 1000 domain name infringements we
> experienced for two of our marks in .com, .net and .org.  This and other
> evidence submitted by the trademark community to WIPO was far from
> anecdotal.
> We're far too busy to waste our time with this process if cybersquatting
> wasn't
> a huge and growing problem.
>
> On the issue of determining what is a famous mark, of course it is risky for
> all
> involved if a mark does not make the list. I think we can compensate for
> this,
> however, by creating a statement that failure to be included on the list of
> famous marks does not imply that the mark is not famous or any other
> negative
> implication.
>
> ______________________________ Reply Separator
> _________________________________
> Subject: Arbitration (RE: (wg-b) food for thought)
> Author:  "Harald Tveit Alvestrand" <SMTP:Harald@alvestrand.no> at GCOHUB
> Date:    9/23/99 1:25 PM
>
> At 09:17 23.09.99 -0700, Roeland M.J. Meyer wrote:
> >I believe
> >that you've strengthend the resolve of many, that arbitration,
> >especially mandatory arbitration, is a "bad thing".
>
> note: I had to have lessons during the WIPO process in the meaning of the
> word "arbitration".
> According to what I understood, an arbitration process is binding on the
> participants - they can't go to court if they feel unfairly treated
> (slightly variant across jurisdictions, but that's the gist of it).
> A mediation process is "just someone helping you talk to each other", while
> the proposed dispute resolution process is somewhere in between - sort of
> like a pretrial court with the power to grant limited interim relief, where
> the parties have the option of either accepting the judgment or taking the
> dispute to court afterwards.
>
> I think you will find lots of people agreeing with you that mandatory
> arbitration (as described above) is a Bad Thing, which is why mandatory
> arbitration is NOT being considered for the Dispute Resolution Process.
>
> Disclaimer: I report only on my understanding. This may or may not have a
> relationship to facts.
>
>                    Harald A
>
>
> --
> Harald Tveit Alvestrand, Maxware, Norway
> Harald.Alvestrand@maxware.no

--
Judith Oppenheimer, 1 800 The Expert, 212 684-7210
mailto:joppenheimer@icbtollfree.com
Publisher of ICB Toll Free News: http://icbtollfree.com
Publisher of WhoSells800.com: http://whosells800.com
Moderator TOLLFREE-L: http://www.egroups.com/group/tollfree-l/info.html
President of ICB Consultancy: http://JudithOppenheimer.com