Re: [wg-b] WG-B Deadline

["John Berryhill Ph.D. J.D." <john@johnberryhill.com>]

The issue is not whether WIPO is trustworthy.

Whether a mark is famous is a multi-factor and fact-intensive inquiry that
depends upon information which is not available to someone trying to make
some kind of objective decision sitting alone in a room.  It is a
contentious issue in litigation, and because of the dependence on
fact-finding, may not even be an appropriate determination in an ex-parte
process, let alone a bureaucratic judgment from on high.

How does anyone at WIPO know, for example, what the advertising budget for
mark X was in 1999?  How do they know how long it has been in continuous
use?

I could understand an examination process along the lines of the Patent
Cooperation Treaty model, which WIPO already administers, under which a
party could submit an application for a WIPO-famous mark along with
specified types of evidence and having some kind of pre-approval
publication.

But to think that someone, anyone, WIPO or not, is going to emerge from a
room alone with a list of famous marks, as that term is understood in any
cognizable system of law, is absurd.  It can takes weeks of evidence
presented at trial in order to enable a court to make that decision.

Otherwise the decision is as reliable as conducting a beauty pageant based
on a textual description of the participants.

John Berryhill, Ph.D. J.D.
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania