Re: [wg-c] I/O Design Initiates Legal Proceedings against CORE

[Rod Dixon <rod@cyberspaces.org>]

You have raised two distinct questions; namely, whether .web is
registrable under U.S. trademark law and, secondly, whether a TLD is
registrable under U.S. trademark law. The short answer to the latter is
maybe and to the former, probably not. Secondary meaning is a powerful
tool in trademark law so it is not entirely impossible for .web to
achieve the status of a trademark for registry services.

As for the term Internet, that is the subject of current proceedings
before the US PTO.

"Kevin J. Connolly" wrote:
> 
> Dear Readers:
> 
> ICANN's involvement in this lovefest should be sharp but limited.
> 
> Reputedly, ISOC and ISI have been instrumental in establishing
> that "Internet" is not trademarkable; the same should be recognized
> as true of .web (as well as the other gTLDs that CORE is said to
> have filed trademark applications for).
> 
> It is hornbook law that a word in common usage cannot be
> appropriated as a trademark unless it is being applied to goods or
> services in an arbitrary, fanciful, non-descriptive manner.
> 
> I don't think that there is any doubt but that under principles of
> US trademark law, neither IOD nor CORE has a right to appropriate
> .web as a top level domain.  Exclusivity over top levels domains
> must derive (if it is to exist at all) from some source other than trademark
> law.
> 
> Kevin J. Connolly
> 
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-- 


Rod Dixon, J.D., LL.M.
Visiting Assistant Professor of Law
Rutgers University School of Law - Camden
rod@cyberspaces.org
http://www.cyberspaces.org