Re: [ga] ICANN benefits

[DPF <david@farrar.com>]

On Mon, 09 Apr 2001 07:56:05 -0700, Dave Crocker wrote:

>>The UDRP gives trademark holders much more power than they have in law and
>>actually contradicts a lot of legal provisions with regards to trademarks.  It
>>is more straight forward and vastly cheaper for trademark holders but
>>discriminates against domain registrants, making it more expensive and in some
>>cases, impossible to get redress.
>
>1. You <<snipp>>ed my statement acknowledging that the UDRP needs improvement.

In what ways would you improve it?  Perhaps a consensus could be
gathered upon the minimum changes needed.  

>2.  You are ignoring that the UDRP is a vast improvement over the NSI policies.

I agree.

>3.  You assertion that the UDRP gives trademark holders "much" more power 
>can be debated.  In any event, see #1, above.
>
>4.  You ignore that the UDRP makes the process vastly cheaper for the 
>domain holder, as well as the trademark claimant.

This is based on the assumption that without the UDRP trademark
claimants would pursue cases in court.  It is likely that at least
some would not.

>5.  You have no statistics to support your claims of unfairness as a 
>substantial pattern.

This is pretty hard to gather because who decides what is unfair?  I
would like to see more research done in this area though.  Perhaps
ICANN could charter a study of cases where near identical sets of
facts have led to different outcomes.

One could do a larger study, splitting cases up into categories such
as defendant has never used domain name, defendant tried to sell name,
defendant was trading in similar area to trademark holder, defendant
had a parody site etc etc and looking at what percentages went with
plaintiff and defendant.

DPF
--
david@farrar.com
ICQ 29964527
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