Re: [wg-c] Setting a bad example

["Martin B. Schwimmer" <martys@interport.net>]

I'm not quite sure it's accurate to say that a drug company bidding for a
name which is being lawfully auctioned, such as drugs.com, is "guilty" of
encouraging someone to register merck.com or prozac.com, and sell it back
to the TM owner.  If Merck bid a lot for the patent rights to a new drug,
is it "guilty" of encouraging another company to infringe Merck's own patents?





At 11:23 AM 8/5/99 -0700, you wrote:
>
>For what it's worth, the same companies that complain about TM
>infringement and cybersquatting are guilty of encouraging the behavior.
>It only takes a small handful of these types of incidents (indeed,
>I believe only a small handful exist) to convince every quick-buck
>artist out there that there's millions to be made in the namespace:
>
>
>  LOS ANGELES (AP) - What's in a name? At least $260,000 so far, and
>  maybe more than $1 million if the name is Drugs.com. Eric MacIver, a
>  21-year-old Internet entrepreneur in Mesa, Ariz., stands to reap the
>  windfall from drug companies' bidding for rights to the Internet
>  domain name to which he owns the exclusive rights. Intense bidding
>  under way for the name highlights the competition among companies
>  seeking the right name to lure customers in the increasingly crowded
>  world of electronic commerce. By Wednesday afternoon the highest
>  confirmed bid was $260,000, but several large drug companies and
>  well-heeled speculators have expressed an interest in bidding before
>  the auction closes Friday evening. 
>
>-- 
>Mark C. Langston	     			Let your voice be heard:
>mark@bitshift.org				     http://www.idno.org
>Systems Admin					    http://www.icann.org
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>
>
>
>

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