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August 29, 2003
Statute of Limitations in Trademark Cases - FORDWORLD.COM
6th Circuit decision upholding an award of punitive damages under ACPA against an individual who registered the name FORDWORLD.COM and attempted to sell it to Ford Motors. The case provides stautory construction as to how to apply ACPA to domain names registered prior to the enacment date of ACPA (November 1, 1999). Also, while courts may sometimes apply analogous state statute of limitation to federal actions, there is no statute of limitations applied to Lanham Act actions.
Aside: FORD is up there with DELTA and UNITED in the list of well-known marks that are not exclusive. This fact is usually deployed in the domain name debate in the context: "how do we know that the registrant of FORDxxxxx.COM targeted Ford Motors and not Ford Models, for example. Well, in this case, the registrant sent an email to the CEO of Ford offering to sell the name.
Ford Motor Company v. Peter Catalanotte, No. 00-75260, (6th Cir. August 28, 2003).
[The Trademark Blog]
Posted by mikki at 01:20 PM | Comments (0)
August 27, 2003
writing to ms. boland
The following call to action from Larry Lessig's Blog is WELL worth your consideration. While many may think that this is not directly within the mission of the Domain Name Rights Coalition, strongarming of user, author, and intellectual property holders' rights by monied corporate interests is precisely one of the things that the DNRC wishes to fight. In this case, open source software is software governed by copyright laws, in which the intellectual property holder has made a decision of how to use his or her rights in order to benefit the industry and users as a whole. It recalls the original constitutional reason for the grant of intellectual property rights; in order to provide incentive for creation of works that will eventually be brought into the public domain. Only in certain cases is that incentive solely monetary.
The pattern followed by corporate interests who feel threatened by non monetary incentives for creation of useful works is precisely the same as has occurred with regard to domain name holders offering information that may harm the current status quo. In many cases, it is easier to stifle the easy accessability to that information by taking access to intuitive domain names, than to do what they truly desire - silencing the speaker.
Those concerned with domain name rights must also be concerned with any other practices in which corporate power is used to strongarm individuals and organizations into limiting discourse. Please consider writing to Ms. Boland, a government employee paid with your tax dollars, and helping to educate her as to the real issues in these cases.
From Larry Lessig's Blog:
Ed Black of the Open Source and Industry Alliance has written Ms. Lois Boland a very nice and good letter about the recent statements about “open source.”
Meanwhile, there’s much reporting that Microsoft is behind the lobbying to kill the WIPO meeting. I don’t know anything about that (for some reason, I’ve been removed from Mr. Gates’ lobbying-strategy list). But it is useful to contrast the sophisticated, moderate, and well-informed work of Microsoft’s GC, Brad Smith, about “open source” software, recently published in a Joint AEI/Brookings book.
In addition to Ed Black’s letter, and perhaps letters from you, she might find Brad Smith’s essay useful.
[Lessig Blog]Posted by mikki at 12:30 PM | Comments (0)
August 26, 2003
House Committee to Hold Whois Hearings, Kowtow...
House Committee to Hold Whois Hearings, Kowtow to IP Interests [ICANNWatch]
Posted by mikki at 08:54 PM | Comments (0)
Ye Olde DNS
I've been writing about the intrinsic problem with the use of the DNS as both a technical mechanism and as a source of unambiguous meaning and authority. The problems are much worse than most of the posters seem to note. The current approach assures that the Internet will unravel and worse, that URLs become perversely reused. The commercial terms of service associated with the use of ".com" names exacerbates the problem by imposing arbitrary social policies into the plumbing of... [CircleID]
Posted by mikki at 11:44 AM | Comments (0)
August 25, 2003
California Supreme Court Upholds Free Speech in DVD Case
Sets High Standard for Publishing DVD Decoding Information [EFF: Press]
San Francisco - The California Supreme Court ruled today that publication of information regarding the decoding of DVDs merits a strong level of protection as free speech and sent a key case back to a lower court for a decision on whether a court can prevent Andrew Bunner from publishing this information, whether on the Internet, on a T-shirt, or elsewhere.
In the case, DVD Copy Control Association (DVD-CCA) v. Bunner, California resident Andrew Bunner was one of thousands of people worldwide who republished DVD-decryption software called DeCSS. DVD-CCA, the company that licenses the use of the DVD encryption code, convinced a trial court to issue an order barring publication of DeCSS pending a final decision in the case, claiming that DeCSS contained its trade secrets. The Court of Appeal ruled that the ban on publication was unconstitutional. The Supreme Court today required the Court of Appeal to reexamine the evidence.
Posted by mikki at 02:35 PM | Comments (0)
August 23, 2003
Al's Story: Another Small Domain Holder Falls Victim to Flawed ICANN Policy
Al Bode is typical of the many small, individual domain name holders throughout the United States and the world. He is a high school teacher of the Spanish language, not a techie, and he registered the domain IOWAWLA.ORG to provide an online presence for the Iowa World Language Association, a professional association for foreign-language educators in the US State of Iowa, of which he is a member. This domain could in no way... [CircleID]
Posted by mikki at 09:38 PM | Comments (0)
August 22, 2003
The UDRP's Relationship to National Law
Posted by mikki at 03:06 PM | Comments (0)
August 21, 2003
Commission Recommends All Postal Mail Be Identified
A Presidential Commission on the Postal Service released a report calling on the US Postal Service (USPS) to aggressively "explore the use of sender identification for every piece of mail, commercial and retail." CDT believes that intelligent mail can offer substantial benefits to mailers, especially in the commercial context, but the Commission ignored privacy concerns and the Constitutional right of anonymous political speech. August 21, 2003 [Center for Democracy and Technology]
Posted by mikki at 07:48 PM | Comments (0)
Microsoft Strongarms WIPO
Intellectual Property
Global Group's Shift On 'Open Source' Meeting Spurs Stir
by William New
A request for a meeting on open development issues has plunged the Geneva-based World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) into a Washington political battle, causing it to shift its position on the issue.
At issue is whether WIPO should hold a meeting next year on "open and collaborative projects" such as "open source" software, which allows users to view and modify underlying code.
August 19, 2003. Technology Daily PM Edition
The meeting was proposed in a July 7 letter sent to WIPO Director General Kamil Idris by 68 distinguished scientists, academics, technologists, open-source advocates, consumer advocates, librarians, industry representatives and economists worldwide.
(http://www.cptech.org/ip/wipo/kamil-idris-7july2003.pdf)
Although the letter cited a broad range of open collaborative projects such as the World Wide Web and the Human Genome Project, the fight has focused on open-source software and on one signer of the letter -- James Love, director of the Consumer Project on Technology, who has actively pushed for the meeting.
WIPO's initial response to the idea was so favorable that proponents began planning for a meeting. After receiving the letter, Francis Gurry, WIPO's assistant director and legal counsel, e-mailed a statement to a Nature magazine reporter calling such open development models "a very important and interesting development."
"The director general of WIPO looks forward with enthusiasm to taking up the invitation to organize a conference to explore the scope and application of these models as vehicles for encouraging innovation," he wrote.
But a few weeks later, WIPO backed off the idea. Gurry said he and other WIPO officials received "many calls" from consumer groups, trade associations, professional associations and representatives from governments.
"What happened in the intervening weeks is that a request for an open discussion on a range of 'projects' became transformed into an increasingly domestically, as opposed to internationally, oriented, polarized political and trade debate about one only of those 'projects', namely open-source software," Gurry told National Journal's Technology Daily on Tuesday. "In those circumstances, the possibility of conducting a policy discussion on intellectual property of the sort that might be appropriate for an international organization devoted to intellectual property became increasingly remote."
U.S. government officials have argued that WIPO is an inappropriate place for such a meeting.
One developing country representative to WIPO on Monday expressed disappointment at hearing that the meeting is in doubt, and Love and representatives from the Computer and Communications Industry Association (CCIA) were furious to learn of the shift. Love last week called the decision a "temporary setback," and vowed, "We're going to make this happen." But for meeting opponents, he said, it would be "as if you made an atheist pope for the day."
CCIA President Ed Black said on Tuesday: "Does this indicate that WIPO is abdicating authority and responsibility for these issues, including open source for the future? If so, we will all live by that, but then so must they. They should step up the plate or step aside. ... It is inexplicable that they would shut the door on what are clearly important issues."
Intellectual Property
U.S. Official Opposes 'Open Source' Talks At WIPO
by William New
An international intellectual property body is not the place for discussions about "open source" software, which allows users to view and modify the underlying code, because it falls outside of the organization's mission, a senior U.S. official argued on Monday.
Reviewing the original mission of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), said Lois Boland, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) acting director of international relations, it is "clearly limited to the protection of intellectual property. To have a meeting whose primary objective is to waive or remove those protections seems to go against the mission."
Boland was referring to a July request by a group of scientists, academics, open-source advocates and others for a meeting at WIPO on "open and collaborative projects," including open-source software. The WIPO secretariat initially replied favorably to the idea.
In a telephone interview, Boland gave several reasons why the Geneva-based WIPO should not hold the meeting, including a tight budget and late scheduling. She also said WIPO's agenda should be driven by member nations, and the idea came from outside the organization.
Officials from the 179 WIPO nations will convene in late September to decide their agenda for the next two years; the agenda has been in the works for months and does not include open-development issues. "It would have been somewhat unusual for such a meeting to materialize out of nothing," Boland said.
In the past six months, WIPO has had to cancel several meetings on topics directly relevant to the organization due to budgetary issues, she said, adding that with those problems, the organization should not "go out on a limb and express receptivity" to an open-development meeting.
U.S. government officials have had "informal" communications with WIPO,
Boland said. A WIPO official said that since receiving a wide range of communications, WIPO has stepped back from the idea of a meeting but has not fully rejected the possibility of addressing the topic.
The U.S. government has an interagency process for developing formal positions at WIPO. A meeting that included officials from PTO and the Copyright Office was held last Thursday at the State Department. The Commerce Department and Office of the U.S. Trade Representative are part of the interagency process, too.
Boland said the United States "would certainly have some rather bureaucratic objections" to WIPO considering a policy on open-source software. "There are technical and legalistic arguments to that." Open-source software is not protected under copyright law but only contract law, which is not the domain of WIPO, she said. That point has been heavily disputed by copyright experts.
Boland suggested that the U.S. government supports open-source growth as a development tool and she proposed it for consideration by a U.N. body focused on development.
She also reprimanded WIPO officials for publicly giving the impression that the body might consider open-source issues. "We think people working within the organization need to be better stewards of interactions" with nonprofit groups and other non-member organizations, she said.
Posted by mikki at 09:14 AM | Comments (0)
August 20, 2003
Yet Another Case of Parody Crushed By Bullies
Threatened with the possibility of legal maneuvering, parody site DontBuyMusic shuts down. Although it would probably win in court, the website decides it just can't afford to be right. By Danit Lidor. [Wired News]
Posted by mikki at 09:45 AM | Comments (0)
Will The Internet Become Less Useful?
There are indications that the internet, at least the internet as we know it today, is dying. I am always amazed, and appalled, when I fire up a packet monitor and watch the continuous flow of useless junk that arrives at at my demarcation routers' interfaces. That background traffic has increased to the point where it makes noticeable lines on my MRTG graphs. And I have little reason for optimism that this increase will cease. Quite the contrary, I find more reason to be pessimistic and believe that this background noise will become a Niagara-like roar that drowns the usability of the internet. Between viruses and spammers and just plain old bad code, the net is now subject to a heavy, and increasing, level of background packet radiation. And the net has very long memory - I still get DNS queries sent to IP addresses that haven't hosted a DNS... [CaveBear Blog]
Posted by mikki at 09:34 AM | Comments (0)
August 19, 2003
ICANN: A Concrete "Thin Contract" Proposal
It looks as if ICANN is going to require applicants for new TLDs to agree (in advance) not to negotiate a changed contract with ICANN. We agree that streamlining the process is in everyone's interest. Along those lines, we are proposing a substantially thinner contract that ICANN and new registries could use. Existing registries should also be allowed to sign up to this contract, if they wish. [CircleID]
Posted by mikki at 08:26 PM | Comments (0)
August 18, 2003
Barcelona Must Give Back Barcelona.com
FROM Barcelona.com
Press release
The Barcelona City Council has to hand back the domain name Barcelona.com
After 3 years of protracted, convoluted and insidious legal argument, the Barcelona Council has to accept they have no rights to use the domain Barcelona.com, as per U.S. Court of Appeals order of June 2nd, 2003.
All City Council arguments regarding trademark rights, bad faith use of the domain and cybersquatting have been fully denied and revoked by the Court.
On August 16th , 2003, the domain has been transferred back to its original registrant, Barcelona.com, Inc.
Without a doubt by the Court of Appeals, all points of defence used and argued to claim rights on the domain by the Barcelona City Council have been rejected.
The Court of Appeals states that:
1.- Plaintiff Barcelona.com, Inc. Did nothing unlawful in registering and using its domain name “Barcelona.com” and therefore is not a cybersquatter.
2.- the Defendant (“City Council”) was a reverse domain name hijacker as to Barcelona.com, Inc. Domain name.
3.- the City Council has no trademark rights to the word “Barcelona” under either U.S or Spanish trademark law.
4.- Defendant Excelentisimo Ayuntamiento de Barcelona shall transfer the domain name “Barcelona.com” to the plaintiff Barcelona.com, Inc. forthwith.
After these 3 years of legal battle, Barcelona.com, Inc. is going to reopen the commercial website “Barcelona.com” aiming to promote mainly local tourism by giving them worldwide exposure, as was doing 3 years ago, before the City Council broke their aspirations.
Finally, the Court of Appeals has settled this battle with the same common sense as all other processes involving geographical domains have been. Recently the Madrid.com case just to mention another domain involving a city in Spain.
The Barcelona.com case has always been considered by internet experts as the exception as to what a Wipo or a Court ruling should have been.
“Barcelona,com, Inc. will start from scratch again. The City Council has not told the truth from the beginning and expected to win this unjustified case with the contributors money. A Goliath vs. David fight. Justice exists, and even small companies can fight against a giant.” said Joan Nogueras, Barcelona.com, Inc.’s spokesman.
Link to Court of Appeals decision: http://pacer.ca4.uscourts.gov/opinion.pdf/021396.P.pdf
Barcelona.com, Inc.
V.P. Larry Kriv
Spokesman Joan Nogueras (press contact Tel. 34609705073 – info@barcelona.com )
Other interesting links
http://www.whois.sc/news/2003-06/barcelona-appeal.html
http://dmoz.org/Computers/Internet/Domain_Names/Disputed_Domain_Names/barcelona.com/
Posted by mikki at 12:29 PM | Comments (0)
August 15, 2003
No Sunshine After Sunrise for .PRO
Via ICANN.blog, an excerpt from Register.com's SEC filing indicating that there doesn't appear to be a launch date for the new .PRO top level domain name.
Previous misinformation on .PRO's sunrise period that I unwitingly circulated here.
[The Trademark Blog]Posted by mikki at 12:22 PM | Comments (0)
August 12, 2003
What's Worse Than WIPO? (Hint - they're...
What's Worse Than WIPO? (Hint - they're doing .kids.us) [ICANNWatch]
Posted by mikki at 12:23 PM | Comments (0)
August 08, 2003
Dude, Where's My .Pro?
From a new article on CNet, which never read a press release it wasn't willing to turn into an article: "The names go online in a few weeks, RegistryPro said." [icann.Blog]
Posted by mikki at 12:20 PM | Comments (0)
August 07, 2003
Do Domain Names Matter? - Part II
This is the second part of a 2-part series article arguing that the decentralization of the Internet will allow the DNS to recede to its earlier, uncontroversial role, before all the lawsuits and screaming matches at ICANN board meetings. To read the first part click here.
By Francis Hwang
Another source of pressure on the DNS was the system's shifting role from one that was primarily mnemonic to one that... [CircleID]
Posted by mikki at 02:27 PM | Comments (0)
Do Domain Names Matter? - Part I
This is the first part of a 2-part series article arguing that the decentralization of the Internet will allow the DNS to recede to its earlier, uncontroversial role, before all the lawsuits and screaming matches at ICANN board meetings.
By Francis Hwang
Is it just me, or are we paying less attention to the Domain Name System than we used to? Seems like only a few years ago that the tech-culture world was attuned to every new angle in the ongoing struggle over the DNS' management.... [CircleID]
Posted by mikki at 02:27 PM | Comments (0)
Activist Gets Year in Jail for Hosting, Link to Bomb Info
Electronic Frontier Foundation: Sentence Doesn't Match Crime [EFF: Press]
Posted by mikki at 12:21 PM | Comments (0)
August 06, 2003
ABA: Cyberspace Law Excellence Award
On August 8th, Professor Lessig will be honored with the first ever American Bar Association Cyberspace Law Excellence Award. The award recognizes “substantial contributions to the development of the law of cyberspace through scholarship, participation in the legislative process or litigation.”
[Lessig News]Posted by mikki at 12:19 PM | Comments (0)
August 05, 2003
Pleadings in WLS Litigation
These PDFs will make interesting reading for WLS watchers. As you'll see from a minute entry on the docket, the Plaintiffs' Motion for Temporary Restraining Order was denied.
- Docket Sheet
- Complaint
- Memorandum of Points and Authorities in Support of Motion for Temporary Restraining Order
- Declaration of Clint Page (Dotster)
- Declaration of Tim Ruiz (GoDaddy)
- Declaration of Martin Garthwaite (eNom)
- Declaration of Barrett Mersereau (Attorney)
- Declaration of Stuart Brown (Attorney)
- ICANN's Opposition to Motion for Temporary Restraining Order
- Declaration of Dan Halloran (ICANN)
- Declaration of Benjamin Turner (Verisign)
Posted by mikki at 12:21 PM | Comments (0)
August 01, 2003
Quick links on the Senate ICANN hearing
Posted by mikki at 12:24 PM | Comments (0)
Air France wins "typosquatting" case
Posted by mikki at 12:24 PM | Comments (0)
Senate Bill Would Place Checks On PATRIOT Act Powers
Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) introduced the Protecting the Rights of Individuals Act, cosponsored by Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR), legislation that would place modest checks and balances on the most troublesome provisions of the USA PATRIOT Act. The bill is backed by a range of organizations from across the political spectrum. August 1, 2003 [Center for Democracy and Technology]
Posted by mikki at 12:18 PM | Comments (0)