Re: Websites and trademarks at odds [CNN]

17 Dec 2003

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In <199802181552.JAA11020@einstein.ssz.com>, on 02/18/98 
   at 09:52 AM, Jim Choate  said:
...
...
How can consumers trust using the Web, where guessing about a
     company's address can be like playing shopper's roulette? Imagine
     visiting your local grocery store and finding no milk or eggs but
     auto parts instead. Imagine walking into Burger King and being
     offered computer software.
This is really much todo about nothing and shows a complete lack of
understanding of Trademark laws.

Trademarks are product specific, there is nothing preventing preventing
two companies from having the same name provided they are not in the same
business. You can even have two companies with the same name in the same
business provided that the likelyhood of mistaking one company for another
is small.

Some examples:

It is perfectly legal to have a company name IBM (the computer company)
and another company called IBM (a local auto repair shop in Podunk, AK).

It is also legal to have two companies called Widgets both making widgets
provided that both were operating in different regions (Widgets #1 only
operated in NewEngland while Widgets #2 only operated in Texas).

Trademarks not only involve company names but also include product names.
A good example of this is Intel and the naming of thier CPU's. The courts
ruled that they could not trademark a Number (286,386,486,...) an this is
the reason for the Pentium(TM) name for their chips which is
trademarkable. Even so there is nothing preventing McDonalds from calling
thier new burger the Pentium as no one should mistake a burger for a CPU
(well except for some windows users <g>).

Now understanding that even when one Tradmarks a name it does not give you
exclusive use of the name how does one apply trademarks to a domain name?

Should www.windows.com be the exclusive domain of Microsoft just because
they have a program with that name? What about a window manufacture
shouldn't he have an equal if not greater claim to that domain (after all
his whole business is windows)? Which windows manufacture? Should ABC
Windows have that claim or Billy-Bob's Windows Imporium? Should the
trademark claim extend to all possible domains? (www.windows.com,
www.windows.org, www.windows.net,
www.windows-blows-chunks-and-bill-gates-sucks-eggs.com)?

I haven't even touched on the international issues. Should a company from
one company have the ability to enforce it's trademark claim to all
domains world-wide?

I fear that this is just another example of the Government trying to get
it's sticky fat fingers on another portion of the net not to mention yet
aother shoddy piece of journalism (calling it that give too much credit to
the author).

Just for the slow ones out there it is perfectly legal for me to open a
computer store, call it Buger King and call my computer system the Wopper.

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