RE: [wg-b] food for thought

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

At 19:47 23.09.99 -0700, Roeland M.J. Meyer wrote:

> > The NSI "policy" ruled that rights registered with the US PTO
> > were superior  to rights registered with the UK (or Egyptian, or
> > Palestinian) PTO with  regards to registration in .com.
>
>Firstly, I don't recall NSI taking any such stance, either officially or
>not.

Apologies; that has to be a former interpretation - it was crucial in the 
debate over "prince.com", where the fight was between an older UK 
registration and a newer US registration (both reasonably famous).
The current language reads:

>The documents required in support of a complainant's written request that 
>Network Solutions invoke Section 9, Dispute Procedures, must include:
>(a) An original, certified copy, not more than six (6) months old, of a 
>trademark registration ("certified registration"), which is in full force 
>and effect and is identical to a second-level domain name (i.e., not 
>including COM, NET, ORG, or EDU) on the principal or equivalent registry 
>of any country (copies certified in accordance with 37 CFR 
>2.33(a)(1)(viii) or its successor will meet this standard for 
>registrations in jurisdictions other than the United States). Trademark or 
>service mark registrations from the supplemental or equivalent registry of 
>any country, or from individual states or provinces of a nation, will not 
>be accepted.

So the Egyptian registry wins, the Virginia registry loses. And the 
registry of company names is ruled irrelevant.


>This is not necessarily true. Besides, between different registries, why
>can't we have some difference of policy. We have that now, between ARIN,
>APNIC, and RIPE. Nothing is falling apart becasue of it.

:-)
actually, ARIN, APNIC and RIPE are administering different segments of the 
address space. There have been cases of (for example) Israeli ISPs renting 
addresses from US ISPs because they didn't like RIPE policies.


> > For the case of domains marketed as "global", I think that's
> > unworkable,  unreasonable and unacceptable.
>
>You are aware that all police agencies, in the US, are armed?

Yes, you live in an unhappy country.
Norwegian police normally goes unarmed.
The point being?

>  It may be unacceptable to you, but when they come knocking on the door, 
> you WILL comply. When the local judge tells to to shutdown your servers, 
> you will
>comply. A Norwegian magistrate would not be able to intervene until well
>after the fact.
>........
>The lesson is clear. For a US-based company, US law will prevail. For a
>foriegn company, housed on US soil, US law will prevail, over US-based
>assets. For a US company, housed on Norwegian soil, Norwegian law will
>prevail over Norwegian-based assets, but US-based assets are governed by
>US law. No matter how "unworkable,  unreasonable and unacceptable" that
>may appear to you. It's reality ... what a concept ...

What we are doing in ICANN (IMHO) is writing contracts.
If the courts overturn our contracts, we lose.
So we aim to minimize the chances of such overturning happening.

That doesn't prevent us from trying to do what's right.

                         Harald A



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