Name: Des Donnelly Organization: www.rexco.com Position: Director (i) Should tradenames be protected...... In principal I would agree that tradenames should be offered some protection (ii) How do you define which tradenames would be eligible..... I would limit protection to those tradenames which have gone through a registration process by their relevant national authority. This authority has carried out any necessary due diligence (iii) How do you define bad faith..... Hmmm this is where the difficulties start, it is feasible to have a similar organisations is different countries in the same field. No doubt there are many thousand occurences worldwide. In this scenario I believe the first come first served rule should be applied. An example of bad faith could be a tradename *floridaoranges brisbane* - someone who is not in the orange business in any way or perhaps not even in business in any way or perhaps imports only oranges from other regions. I would see a complaint from Florida orange growers to be reasonable in this example and the tradename of the Bribane person to be unreasonable. (iv) What provision.... for dispute resolution I think the WIPO domain resolution process in place is ideal though as volume increases costs should fall not the reverse. Perhaps the OpenSRS model may be useful in this regard where WIPO could *license* agents worldwide, this would help introduce some free market principals. (v) Would directory.... avoiding domain name conflicts ... be useful, Perhaps it would be smart to persuade all registration authorities/agents to place a tradename/trademark infingement warning up front, just like a cigarette warning *illegal domain registration may be harmful to your internet reputation* Regards Des Donnelly www.rexco.com Ireland
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