[At-Large] [GTLD-WG] IRT working group report

[Alan Greenberg]

At 31/05/2009 11:14 PM, Hong Xue wrote:
> > This may be correct with respect to registrants and privacy. I am not an
> > expert in these matters, but it seems to me that from the point of view of
> > not confronting users with domain names that are easily confusingly similar
> > to others, the needs of real end-users and IP holders may well be quite
> > complementary.
>
>Neither IP extremism nor anti-IP extremism is in the interests of
>users. Theoretically trademark protection is for users first and
>competition second. Trademark counterfeiting is subject to criminal
>punishment for it is deceptive to the public as well as infringes the
>private right of the trademark owner. So the issue is reasonableness.
>
>I'm not sure if Alan is referring to "domain name law" (perhaps
>existing in some jurisdictions, Canada? ). If we are the same page and
>discussing confusing similarity in the ambit of trademark law, then I
>doubt the reasonableness of precluding an applied TLD string for it is
>doomed "easily confusing" to users--it's not been used (let alone in
>commerce). Even if such precluding could exist, it should be limited
>to a small scope and unfortunately there is no globally recognized
>well-know mark list to define that scope.
>
>Hong

I started out saying I wasn't an expert (which you are!  ;-) ), and I 
certainly was not commenting on the specifics of the IRT 
recommendations. I was just reminding people that we should look at 
the merits and not react to who has written the proposal (in line 
with the theory of your second sentence).

Alan