A new idea that might avoid trademark problems. Please read and comment.

[CoolDot]

>Me too CoolDot

Welcome in the club Garry )

With all the great minds in the world - why is there not any serious research done on finding a solution?

My gut feelings says:

Obsiously the people who could finance such research don't feel a tremendous need for initiating such research because the status quo works nicely for them. Why change a winning system?

 

[jberryhill]

"It would be great if we could finally grow up and declare domains PROPERTY with all the protection of the law that that brings with it. THAT would be the correct solution."

Sure. Lord knows that nobody ever litigates over PROPERTY.

So, you want to pay property tax on top of your domain registration fee. You want to battle over domain names in contested inheritance proceedings. You want your ex-spouse to get half of the domain names you registered during the course of your marriage... Yes, by all means, let's add another entire body of law, and the types of disputes related to that body of law, on top of the mess we already have.

And, oh yes, WIPO is just rolling in dough over the UDRP. Out of the filing fee for disputes, they keep about $500. The rest goes to the panelists, most of whom are professional attorneys with rates that don't justify the effort of doing UDRP disputes. As a point of reference, my hourly rate is $275. Now, if someone hands me the stack of papers for a UDRP proceeding, you do the math. How much time could I spend reading the complaint, response, and writing a decision, and still break even over the other pile of work on my desk?

It looks as if WIPO is going to close out the year with something under 900 UDRP decisions. At $500 a pop, that comes to a gross of around $450,000. After paying their case managers and dealing with other administrative overhead, oh, gee, I can just see that they are going to be fabulously rich in no time. UNICEF probably takes in more money with their Halloween collection boxes.

Yes, I can see that there is a vast global conspiracy over a couple of ten grand.

"Why is there not any serious research done on finding a solution?"

To find a "solution", you need a "problem". Now in .com, .net, .org, .info and .biz, there are something like a total of 35 million domain names registered.

There have been something like 6500 to 7000 UDRP cases.

Those UDRP cases represent about .02% of all domain names registered.

Assuming around 1.5 million active registered US trademarks, and even if each UDRP case involved a unique registered trademark (i.e. one involving a trademark not asserted in another UDRP dispute, and leaving out other countries and unregistered trademarks), then we would have a "problem" affecting less than .46% of US registered trademarks.

Let's recap:

.02% of domain names and .46% of trademarks, a dispute system that nets probably less than $200K and has dealt with 7000 cases. Now, the "problem" is what?

 

[Garry Anderson]

J> To find a "solution", you need a "problem".

J> Now, the "problem" is what?

John - now you do really believe that - do you?

Why have all this effort - UDRP, Sunrise, Cybersquatting Law, Arbitrators, court cases, etc., if there is little or no problem?

Your figures are also disengenuous - that is tip of iceburg - most cases do not get to UDRP.

I have had emails from domain owners threatened by lawyers - you know they frighten most people.

Anyhow - numbers of cases is not the problem - that is the outcome of it.

The REAL problem is how to identify registered trademarks on the Internet - to help prevent 'consumer confusion', 'trademark conflict' and 'passing off'.

Also - there is no "vast global conspiracy over a couple of ten grand".

FACT: UN WIPO receive MOST of its income from business - WIPO are heavily biased in their favour - so not just "a couple of ten grand".

It has a budget of 678 million Swiss francs - "a couple of ten grand" - yeh I really think so!

Serious dosh - serious corruption.

WIPO are not interested in fairness or objective rule of law - just helping big business to abuse their intellectual property rights.

Quote:

Lois Boland, director of international relations for the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, said that open-source software runs counter to the mission of WIPO, which is to promote intellectual-property rights.

"To hold a meeting which has as its purpose to disclaim or waive such rights seems to us to be contrary to the goals of WIPO," she said.

http://www.detnews.com/2003/technology/0308/22/technology-250851.htm

WIPO 'promotion' includes aiding and abetting the violation of Trademark and Competition Law in things like Sunrise and helping make unfair UDRP rules.

Surely even you agree that Sunrise violates these laws?

As is the US State Department and USPTO equally biased - http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=03/08/22/2014231&tid=

 

[jberryhill]

"It has a budget of 678 million Swiss francs - "a couple of ten grand" - yeh I really think so!"

...as if running the UDRP were a significant part of what they do.

The US Department of Agriculture has a budget of billions. That still makes my kids' milk money insignificant to them.

For example, WIPO administers the Patent Cooperation Treaty. Last year alone, 114,048 international patent applications were filed under this treaty. The basic filing fee for the first thirty pages is around four hundred dollars.

That right there is about 45 million dollars in fees from the PCT, relative to less than 500K from the UDRP. Yes, Garry, all of the world's governments are conspiring over that vast fortune.

 

[Garry Anderson]

Sorry John - you misdirect or misunderstood.

That point I made, was about the bias - UN WIPO receive MOST of its income from business.

The major point - the main PROBLEM - is to identify registered trademarks on the Internet - to help prevent 'consumer confusion', 'trademark conflict' and 'passing off'.

 

[CoolDot]

jberryhill, Garry Anderson, it is clear that you somehow just can't get together on this issue. The above discussion is out of my league, so I won't comment on it.

All I am saying is that I do think there is a problem with domains that are valid worldwide but are forced into a certain market by underlying trademarks. And I am also siding with Garry in that I believe that the current practice of the law favors the big guys.

Technically it would be ideal to have domains like
jonnysbeerhouse.us.reg and
jonnysbeerhouse.de.reg

but the internet community will not use these domains and so they would be worthless. But if, by splitting the traffic I am able to open the domain up to jonny in America and jonny in Germany, then would that not be a great thing?

I know I am asking for much, but living with the current state of things, should we not all try to look out for visions that could improve the current mess?

So again, I propose
Jonnysbeerhouse.com
with splitting the visitors into American and others. Domainsharing. Why not?

Thank you both for your input and your discussion of the surrounding topics.

Kind regards
CoolDot

 

[jberryhill]

Cooldot,

People already do this, and it doesn't take a complicated scripting mechanism. You can just use a map:

Take a look at http://www.scrabble.com

The "SCRABBLE" trademark is owned by Hasbro in the US and Canada, and by Mattel just about everywhere else.

The domain scrabble.com, you will note, is registered to a gentleman named Jonathan Land at quinnemanuel.com.

Dang! You come up with a bright idea, and some lawyer figures out a way to make money off of it....

 

[CoolDot]

Mr.Berryhill, thank you for the link. That's very interesting. Although I highly doubt that the manual selection of traffic (by clicking on it) doesn't cause initial confusion.

But I just thought about something else that might undermine my technique. What if an American is travelling in Europe and logs onto a traffic-split site from there then. Then he would get directed to the "wrong" site and so there would be trademark-infringement in rare cases. A manual selection AFTER the automatic one would then make sense.

Do you have any idea how the scrabble-constellation came to pass? Did the lawyer have the domain first and then split it or did the two big companies settle in court or something?

In any case a very interesting example. Thank you for the link.

Kind regards
CoolDot

 

[jberryhill]

If you like the "Scrabble" situation, then you'll love this:

http://www.budweiser.cz - home of the ORIGINAL Budweiser beer.

That particular stalemate has been brewing for decades.

Heh, "brewing"... get it... aww man, it's going to be a great week.

 

[CoolDot]

jberryhill, thanks for that link also.

hrm.. brewing, huh? )