Everyone should read: Land Grab? ccTLDs and multilingual names

[dotworx]

Very long post from Internet Governance on IDN ...I haven't finished reading myself but I'm sure all of you are interested:

http://blog.internetgovernance.org/blog/_archives/2007/12/5/3392238.html

[bwhhisc]

QUOTE SUMMARY:
At the end of the day, you get two tracks to a new IDN TLD:

On track one, you have incumbent ccTLD monopolies, who already control anywhere from 98% to 60% of the DNS registry market in their country. Those registries will be given, for free, first pick of two, three, or maybe 20 new IDN TLDs, and be able to implement them before anyone else, in a market that is characterized by extremely high switching costs.

On track two, you have nongovernmental competitors, who will have to wait a year or two extra, pay six-figure sums just to file an application, then another $200-300k to prepare their application and lobby for it at ICANN meetings, and then be subjected to months of challenges, review by "expert panels," and possibly competitive auctions.

QUOTE:
Does anyone believe that .com's owner should be handed a free gift of the "equivalent" of .com in another script? Should the registry for .org get a free gift of the equivalent of the term "organization" in Cyrillic or Chinese? What is the rationale for giving ccTLDs "fast-track" access to self-selected IDN strings and not gTLDs?

MORE QUOTE...
I was originally sanguine about this process, thinking, "sure, give each ccTLD one new IDN string in a script of their choice and be done with it." The govts/incumbents get their pound of flesh and that frees the rest of the world to proceed without interference.

But the international politics of names are too subtle and complex to be so easily contained. First, the countries decided that they couldn't possibly be satisfied with some abstract, two-character representation of their country name in a format that would be the same for everyone. Some countries contended that they couldn't possibly properly represent their country name with only two characters. Sounds fine, except that the beauty of the old ASCII country code list is precisely that it is a standardized coding. It is an essentially arbitrary mapping that obtains its correspondence and meaning through use, not through some divinely ordained correspondence to a country's "real" name. In that arbitrariness there was a complete equality and efficiency. Everyone knows
that 2-letter TLDs are country codes. All country codes are roughly equal, each country gets one and no one is any better
or worse than another.

Once you depart from that rough equality, then it's possible that some of these IDN scripts will be 3 or 4 characters, some will be 2, some may be 6. You are no longer dealing with "country codes" but with words, which means that they are in effect gTLDs. And it is only a short step from that -- a step that many GACers and ccTLD managers are already making -- to claim that they should have more than one, because they need to have "their" country name in multiple scripts. The European Union, for example, said that since its territory includes countries with Cyrillic and 3 other non-Latin scripts, it is legally barred from choosing only one IDN to accompany .eu. (Funny then, how was it legal to get .eu in the first place?) India, it turns out, has 24 different language groups that might represent its name differently. And of course, if one country gets 24 new IDN TLDs, won't they all want that many?

Given the fact that national governments have already demonstrated their tendency to claim all kinds of names related to their country, there is also the possibility that ccTLDs will lay claim to multiple words that refer to the country (e.g., the equivalent of "America," USA, "United States" etc.)

[Rubber Duck]

Dreamers!

[jacksonm]

Wipo is going to have to hire an army of specialists just to keep up with the incoming complaints of "I own cars.com in ascii and xxx owns it in japanese, I am entitled to his domain." And then you will have the owner of the Japanese romaji ascii.com for cars claiming that he's entitled to the Japanese idn.com for cars.

It is going to get interesting. We need an active lawyer on this forum. Mr. Snow, I know you're watching and I wish you'd join in and comment sometimes under a nick that lets us all know that it's you.

.

[bwhhisc]

Wipo is going to have to hire an army of specialists just to keep up with the incoming complaints of "I own cars.com in ascii and xxx owns it in japanese, I am entitled to his domain." And then you will have the owner of the Japanese romaji ascii.com for cars claiming that he's entitled to the Japanese idn.com for cars.

It is going to get interesting. We need an active lawyer on this forum. Mr. Snow, I know you're watching and I wish you'd join in and comment sometimes under a nick that lets us all know that it's you. .
If 80% of the world does not speak English...the 99.9% of ascii "domains" have no meaning to the majority of the
non-English speaking world.

Not sure about any "statute of limitations" but IDNs have been sold for over 7 years with no legal challenge to their
validity as far as I know. Any challenge of this sort should have been undertaken back in 2000 and 2001.

Maybe domain lawyer John Berryhill (member at DN Forum) can provide some comments. Whatever happens, it just
reaffirms it is going to be a long road for idn.idn implementation in many languages.

[Rubber Duck]

http://domains.nationalarbitrationforum.org/main.aspx?itemID=1150&hideBar=False&navID=314&news=26

[Charrua]

I don’t like these :mad: , if they have been profiting with our money for 7 years and never have ask to any of us from the same domain on ASCII version, I think they have no right to do these , in any case I think whoever lose one or more IDNs in base of that can put a lawsuit against and win if not is plain FRAUD.

Disclosure I still have my Soul, i'm not a lawyer :) .

Charrua.

[Rubber Duck]

Don't worry. Most of them don't even understand IDN yet.

Furthermore, if they think they can claim the IDNs they haven't got a clue about Intellectual Property Rights. Mind you that would hardly be surprising because judging by the dot Mobi euphoria, most of them haven't a clue about anything!

[thefabfive]

I don't see any way the owner of cars.com (for example) could make a claim for "cars" in another language. If there was any legal footing there they would have already attempted to get "cars" in spanish, french, portuguese, etc.

The more talk I hear about IDN.IDN the more I'm happy with plain old ASCII .com.

[jacksonm]

I don't see any way the owner of cars.com (for example) could make a claim for "cars" in another language. If there was any legal footing there they would have already attempted to get "cars" in spanish, french, portuguese, etc.

I don't see how they could win such a claim, but that certainly won't stop hordes of them from initiating such claims because they believe they have rights to translations. That was my only point. You're right though, if they aren't already going after the ascii translations then no worries.

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[Drewbert]

And let's not forget that these TM owners have representation at ICANN including people on the board.

We have nothing.

We just pay to run the damn show.

[dotworx]

what about owner of Cafe.com claiming the right of Café.com?

[jacksonm]

what about owner of Cafe.com claiming the right of Café.com?

If Cafe.com is trademarked, then Café.com certainly meets the confusingly similar requirement...

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[Rubber Duck]

And therein lies the problem with Latin names. Generics are nevertheless still Generic.

[jacksonm]

And therein lies the problem with Latin names. Generics are nevertheless still Generic.


True you couldn't trademark "cafe", but couldn't you trademark "cafe.com" if you owned it and was using it to build a brand? I'm really not sure.

.

[Rubber Duck]

True you couldn't trademark "cafe", but couldn't you trademark "cafe.com" if you owned it and was using it to build a brand? I'm really not sure.

.

Not in the US. There is no trademarking of Generic + Dot Com!

[jacksonm]

Not in the US. There is no trademarking of Generic + Dot Com!


Abstracts?

.

[Rubber Duck]

Abstracts?

.

No.

[dotworx]

You go to Cars.com and you can see a TM sign in its logo! But I couldn't find a exact match of "cars.com" in USPTO, only this one - "cars.com incorporated".

Maybe RD is right..

However here in Australia, it seems to be possible to register generic.com.au as trademark. There is a popular web site called RealEstate.com.au, and I reg'ed a typo of it and it brought home $100+ each week via NameDrive It's amazing how many people couldn't spell "real estate" right. But the local registry took the name away from me due to "trademark infrigement".

[zenmarketing]

The TM is for the logo, not the name.

And anway, and "TM" can be added to anything. ® is the symbol for a registered trademark, ie. something that would show up on the USPTO search.

[dotworx]

IC...thanks for the clarification. always wondered the difference between TM and ®

[dave_5]

I own 2 "SM" (Service Markes) on 2 domains.

you cannot TM (in the US) a domain name only SM. If you see TM it might be for the logo/drawing, or some people add it just for the "looks".

[npcomplete]

Not in the US. There is no trademarking of Generic + Dot Com!

Here is a service mark from AOL.com for the domain Love.com:

drawing code: (1) TYPED DRAWING
reg date: April 27, 2004

Tarr status page:
http://tarr.uspto.gov/servlet/tarr?regser=serial&entry=75611943

I suppose if you are AOL you can push anything through the system. It is worth pointing out that this is a Typed Drawing. The modern term for this is Standard Character Claim. Basically it means any font for "Love.com", and is as tough as it gets. A Standard Character Claim (or older Typed Drawing) requires :

* All letters and words in the mark are depicted in Latin characters;
* All numerals in the mark are depicted in Roman or Arabic numerals;
* The mark includes only common punctuation or diacritical marks; and
* The mark does not include a design element.

The above is from:
http://www.uspto.gov/go/tac/doc/basic/appcontent.htm

Now items 1, 2, and 3 in the above list rule out transfer of the mark to IDN. You can trademark Love.com but you cannot trademark the concept.

Marc

[IDNCowboy]

Not in the US. There is no trademarking of Generic + Dot Com!
I've had a famous internet lawyer that was the founder of one of the first established sites trademark a few of my web businesses (businessname.com etc)

He says yes you can

[Rubber Duck]

I've had a famous internet lawyer that was the founder of one of the first established sites trademark a few of my web businesses (businessname.com etc)

He says yes you can

Well he is talking bollocks. I have previously published guidance notes to those arbitrating TM application that says this is specifically excluded. How did Yahoo get on with Y.com?

[jacksonm]

Well he is talking bollocks. I have previously published guidance notes to those arbitrating TM application that says this is specifically excluded. How did Yahoo get on with Y.com?


Note that there is a big difference between winning/losing a WIPO case and being sued inside the US for TM infringement. The two are not connected with each other.

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[Rubber Duck]

You should also note that TM Regitration is exactly what it says on the tin.

Many large companies have not registered their Trademarks. When you have disputes like Budweiser and J & J that stretch back into the 19th Century, a 2007 registration has no relevance and only serves to trivalise the TM.

Registration per se has no legal standing in most Western Countries. It is merely a means of estalishing a claim. It does not determine the validity of that claim.