I will concur with your assertion that it is *possible to infer* that
Apple running a .apple registry for its own internal commercial purposes
would fit their definition of "community"... but the phrasing of the
restrictions they place on it makes it pretty clear, at least to me,
that the people who wrote it weren't thinking about that possible
use case.
All of their restrictions/instructions become tautologies in that limiting
case, do they not?
And indeed: who arbitrates trademark conflicts, in what is now *necessarily*
a global collision space? Forbidding the registration of gTLDs which
conflict with trademarks registered with any national authority would seem
to be only minimally sane, to me... but that's orthogonal to whether
the issue's come up in specific detail, of course.
My apologies for not reading deeper into your citation, though I'm not sure
I would have caught that section as a response to me anyway.
Forgetting even the individual nation issues, within the US, there are
so many different trademark namespaces that you can have multiple
organizations with the same name.
For example:
MacDonald's would likely get title to .macdonalds under the new rules, right?
Well... Which MacDonald's?
1. The fast food chain
2. O.C. MacDonald's Plumbing Supply
3. MacDonald and Sons Paving Systems
4. MacDonald and Madison Supply Company
5. etc.
All of them have legitimate non-conflicting trademarks on the name MacDonald's
(or at least could, I admit I made some of them up). I said when this mess
first started that mapping trademarks to DNS would only lead to dysfunction.
It did. Now the dysfunction is becoming all-encompassing. It will be interesting
to watch the worlds IP lawyers (IP as in Intellectual Property, not Internet Protocol)
eat their young over these issues for the next several decades.
It's actually "McDonalds", of course, and the US trademark law system has
a provision for "famous" marks. I don't recall what the rules are, but
once they've decide your mark is "famous", then it no longer competes only
in its own line-of-business category; *no one* can register a new mark in
any category using your word.
Coca-Cola, Sony, and I think Kodak, are the canonical examples of a
famous mark.
MacDonald's would likely get title to .macdonalds under the new rules,
right?
Well... Which MacDonald's?
1. The fast food chain
2. O.C. MacDonald's Plumbing Supply
3. MacDonald and Sons Paving Systems
4. MacDonald and Madison Supply Company
5. etc.
All of them have legitimate non-conflicting trademarks on the name MacDonald's
(or at least could, I admit I made some of them up). I said when this mess
first started that mapping trademarks to DNS would only lead to dysfunction.
It did. Now the dysfunction is becoming all-encompassing. It will be
interesting to watch the worlds IP lawyers (IP as in Intellectual Property,
not Internet Protocol)
eat their young over these issues for the next several decades.
Indeed.
It's actually "McDonalds", of course, and the US trademark law system has
a provision for "famous" marks. I don't recall what the rules are, but
once they've decide your mark is "famous", then it no longer competes only
in its own line-of-business category; *no one* can register a new mark in
any category using your word.
While that is true, there are several McDonalds registered in various spaces
that actually predate even the existance of Mr. Crok's famous burger joints.
Coca-Cola, Sony, and I think Kodak, are the canonical examples of a
famous mark.
Let us not also forget the over-extension of that situation, as applied to Jell-O
where there are now very bizarre rules about who can and can't refer to just
any gelatine dessert as Jell-O.
In message <201106180718.p5I7IrBe020792@mail.r-bonomi.com>, Robert Bonomi write
s:
> Subject: Re: ICANN to allow commercial gTLDs
> From: Owen DeLong <owen@delong.com>
>
> MacDonald's would likely get title to .macdonalds under the new rules,
> right?
>
> Well... Which MacDonald's?
>
> 1. The fast food chain
> 2. O.C. MacDonald's Plumbing Supply
> 3. MacDonald and Sons Paving Systems
> 4. MacDonald and Madison Supply Company
> 5. etc.
Easy to resolve (excuse the pun) _that_ one.
The _senior_ claimant to that domain would be Clan MacDonald, of Scotland.
Who gets 'apple'? Apple (the computer company), Apple (the record company)?
How about the 'fruit of the month' club?
Now, if you want a _hard_ problem, who gets to register 'YellowPages' ?
<*EVIL* grin>
YellowPages would work. It's used under licence.
au.YellowPages
uk.YellowPages
As for single label hostnames, RFC 897 got rid of single label
hostnames and they should not come back. They are a security issue,
see RFC 1535.
Subject: Re: ICANN to allow commercial gTLDs
From: Owen DeLong <owen@delong.com>
Date: Sat, 18 Jun 2011 01:24:37 -0700
[[.. sneck ..]]
While that is true, there are several McDonalds registered in various
spaces that actually predate even the existance of Mr. Crok's famous
burger joints.
Just for the recorcd, that's a crock.
The man who made the burger chain a household word is Mr Ray _Kroc_.
