Re: [wg-b] What WG-B is supposed to be doing (RE: Arbitration)

[Judith Oppenheimer <joppenheimer@icbtollfree.com>]

Randy,

I've been so tempted to dig through my cartons of carrier petitions to the FCC
in response to the Toll Free NPRM in 1995, where across the board all the
carriers argued vociferously against any trademark interest in toll free
numbers, against  trademark owners' need to replicate 800 in 888, etc.

This of course, because even though portability gave birth to the language,
"The Toll Free Service End-User Subscriber has the ultimate right to control
its Toll Free Service, and its reserved, active, or assigned Toll Free Service
numbers", RespOrgs (mostly the same carriers) prefer to think of toll free
numbers as "theirs", and as such they always position against any user interest
whatsoever in those numbers.

ie, in the toll free wars, carriers (themselves trademark owners and end
users), sit on the controlling side of the table and argue against end user
rights in numbers.

Trademark owners (non-carrier end users) sit on the other side of the table,
and get dumped on at every turn.

Believe it or not, trademark owners *also* petitioned the FCC against user
interest in numbers or rights to replicate, *except* for trademark owners,
forgetting of course that the FCC for all its flaws, cannot be overtly
discriminatory ...

Ironic, isn't it?   No one gets it, that unless everyone wins, no one wins ...

Judith


Randy Bush wrote:

> >>  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.
> > Do you have this online? URL?
>
> hint: i am told that bell atlantic has been trying to convince courts that
> anything with "bell" in infringes on their famous mark.
>
> randy

--
Judith Oppenheimer, 1 800 The Expert, 212 684-7210
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