Re: [wg-c] trademark law & new gTLDs

[Milton Mueller <mueller@syr.edu>]

Interesting....
I agree that yellow pages are a much more appropriate model for what users
might be looking for than the 42 TM categories. I totally disagree with the
implication (which may be unintended, or a misinterpretation on my part) that
the TLD space should consist of a globally standardized set of yellow-page type
categories. Indeed, Yellow Pages themselves are not even standardized
regionally, much less globally. And why would anyone want them to be?

The problem of classifying content on the web is one that should be left
entirely to entrepreneurial initiative. RealNames and other value-added forms
of naming are on to that problem. Leave it to the Yahoos, Search engines, CNRP,
etc. don't try to engineer it into the DNS.

The basic objection to the Higgs idea is that DNS is not and should not try to
be an index or catalogue of internet content. It can only do this badly, and it
thrusts ICANN into areas that it has no mandate to do.

The Usenet example is even more interesting than Yellow pages. Usenet is a
successful example of an entirely open name space. One can create a name space
devoted to "Barney.die.die.die" without worries about whether the purple
dinosaur is going to hurl TM lawyers at you. Am I missing something, or if TM
lawyers start paying attention to that precendent will they begin to relax more
about an open DNS space?


Keith Gymer wrote:

> From: Mark Measday <measday@ibm.net> wrote
>
> >I restate the naive original question, which would presumably be
> >answered by a large number of similar informed responses, should this be
> >the case..... Whilst no taxonomy can be perfect, the question remains
> >whether the imperfections in the reconciliation of the  international
> >classes to various national laws are sufficient to prevent mapping of
> >the international classes to classes of TLDs in practice, à la Higgs.
>
> In my view, as a trade mark attorney, and having looked at this in some
> detail, such a mapping would be inadequate and inappropriate.  If we were
> creating a trademark classification system now, we would surely not start
> from the very limited 42 Nice classes.
>
> The more appropriate model for a business taxonomy (and before MM and co
> jump up and down I am not proposing that a future TLD taxonomy should be
> exclusively for business), would seem to be provided by Yellow Pages.
> Consumers and businesses are used to finding the business they are looking
> for using such a taxonomy, and a YP taxonomy can take account of national
> and cultural variations if ccTLDs haven't mortgaged their SLDs already (eg.
> lloyds.bank.uk) etc.  (The problem of existing ccTLDs which have allowed
> open registration at SLD level, might perhaps be addressed by issuing new
> ISO-3166 3-letter TLDs to each country subject to the restriction that they
> are for national YP category use only).
>
> Obviously, as there are presently several thousand YP sub-categories, some
> selectivity would be desirable to get the process started, but considering
> how Usenet groups are categorised and sub-categorised, I don't believe that
> this represents an insurmountable problem.  The main difficulty I foresee
> would be agreeing suitable TLD abbreviations for the categories.
>
> Keith