RE: [wg-b] Re: WIPO as an argument for famous marks protection

["Hartman, Steve" <HartmanS@Nabisco.com>]

It has taken many years for each country to work out it own rules as to how
to treat words that have important religious or cultural significance when
those words are used for trademark purposes, commercial purposes generally,
and even simply for communicative purposes. These national approaches are
still evolving; after all, societies are constantly evolving. It is
impractical to expect ICANN or any single entity to create a set of rules
for handling religious or cultural symbols that would be acceptable to the
international community. The international community is still too young and
undeveloped; there is not enough common ground. And who's to say there ever
will be. Or should be.


Commercial trademarks are not sacred cows. Companies that want to do
business globally will be forced by their consumers, their investors, and
the governments in which they do business, to chose marks that are accepted
widely.

Steve Hartman

> -----Original Message-----
> From:	Harald Tveit Alvestrand [SMTP:Harald@alvestrand.no]
> Sent:	Thursday, October 07, 1999 2:24 AM
> To:	mueller@syr.edu; Martin B. Schwimmer
> Cc:	wg-b@dnso.org
> Subject:	Re: [wg-b] Re: WIPO as an argument for famous marks
> protection
> 
> At 02:15 07.10.99 -0400, Milton Mueller wrote:
> >Religion and culture = can of worms.
> >Commercial trademarks for western multinationals = sacred cow
> 
> so since a sacred cow is part of religion and culture, we have proved by 
> induction that commercial trademarks for western multinationals is a can
> of 
> worms. Guess we knew that :-)
> 
>                           Harald
> 
> >Martin B. Schwimmer wrote:
> >
> > > WIPO earlier rejected the idea of a protected name list (religions,
> > > medicines, etc.) as too much of a can of worms at this time).
> >
> >--
> >m i l t o n   m u e l l e r // m u e l l e r @ s y r . e d u
> >syracuse university          http://istweb.syr.edu/~mueller/
> 
> --
> Harald Tveit Alvestrand, Maxware, Norway
> Harald.Alvestrand@maxware.no