To: process.mail@wipo.int
From: "Brian Murtagh"
Subject: Trade-name Cybersquatters
Date: Fri, 15 Jun 2001 01:25:49 -0400
Gentlefolk,
In your consideration of these issues, please give (formally, legally!) the benefit of the doubt to individuals registering site names.
A company, corporation or similar aggregate entity has already an overwhelming advantage in ability to hire legal talent, advertising, et cetera. In every aspect other than the timing of initial registration of site names, the corporation has the advantage; the individual registree even has to pay the same registration fee as the large company, which is proportionately a larger burden (i.e. $25 is a lot more to me than it is to Coca-Cola).
They should, at the least, be required to show on a case-by-case basis that a] an individual is genuinely "cybersquatting" in an attempt to sweat money out of the trademark-owning entity, and b] no reasonable alternative site name will serve the same purpose for the plaintiff (e.g. "www.pokey-toy.com" vs. "www.pokey.org".
For disclosure purposes, I have rights to only one site name, drfrog.net, which I use strictly as a personal site. My sole interest in this email is to add my voice to those urging caution before allowing a new arena of human endeavor (commercial or otherwise) to be subsumed by default into those already claimed by existing organizations.
Finally, I offer one alternative which I have not seen in the literature to date. If it is genuinely felt that commercial trademarks are infringed upon by individuals registering similar names, could sanctions not be limited to the ".com" domain? That was, after all, the original intent of dividing domain names into categories such as ".com", ".org", ".net", ".gov" and ".edu".
Brian Murtagh, bmurtagh@crosswinds.net