Re: [wg-b] wg-b

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

At 12:34 05.04.2000 -0400, John Berryhill Ph.D. J.D. wrote:
>I can guarantee you that I will hold the makers of the list liable for any
>of my clients' famous trademarks which do not end up on the list.

Exactly the attitude that I think will lead to no list being created.
If we can't even try, we certainly won't get there.

We've tried to shove this around quite a bit:

- Creating the list ad-hoc and asking for its blessing: Not very
   likely to benefit the creators, see above.
- Having ICANN create the list: not the necessary expertise, no
   legal umbrella except its legal fund
- Having WIPO create the list: no wish, no jurisdiction, no way to set limits
   (I've not seen a response from WIPO indicating otherwise; in fact they seem
   to have been silent since the WIPO report)
- Having a tribunal/challenge panel: no home for it (see above), no
   fairness guarantee, no way to set limits on list size, no initial content,
   not clear who's empowered to set rules for its evaluation.

I tried once before to suggest that we should try to "play-register" the 
names we thought should be in the list (search for 
"famous-marks.alvestrand.no" in the archives) - the only respondent gave me 
a hundred not very famous marks, and one which was actively contested in 
DNS space.

Can we give up the list idea permanently now, please?
And with it the whole idea of any famous marks protection except
recourse to the courts?

                      Harald A

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