[gnso-rpm-wg] Action Items, Slides and Notes from the Working Group call held earlier today

Thu Apr 6 15:57:17 UTC 2017

My earlier email listing the various types of third parties that may be involved was in no way meant to conflate a domainer/speculator with a cybersquatter.

J. Scott Evans
408.536.5336 (tel)
345 Park Avenue, Mail Stop W11-544
Director, Associate General Counsel
408.709.6162 (cell)
San Jose, CA, 95110, USA
Adobe. Make It an Experience.
jsevans at adobe.com
www.adobe.com

On 4/6/17, 7:18 AM, "Phil Corwin" <psc at vlaw-dc.com> wrote:

    I must once again point put that domainers are not equivalent to cybersquatters and should not be lumped together.

    Domainers are domain investors and developers. One can call them speculators, although as far as I know speculation in assets of any type -- and the market has clearly demonstrated that domains can be very valuable assets -- is an accepted and legal aspect of the same capitalist system that grants limited monopoly rights in various categories of intellectual property to further valid public purposes. UDRP decisions have repeatedly found that holding a domain portfolio for investment purposes is not a per se infringing activity. 

    Cybersquatters, on the other hand, are parties who register domains with the bad faith intent to subsequently use them to target a trademark owner's goods and services and thereby infringe the mark. I do not represent such parties and favor effective enforcement of TM rights against them.

    I hope we can keep that distinction clear.

    Philip S. Corwin, Founding Principal
    Virtualaw LLC
    1155 F Street, NW
    Suite 1050
    Washington, DC 20004
    202-559-8597/Direct
    202-559-8750/Fax
    202-255-6172/Cell

    Twitter: @VlawDC

    "Luck is the residue of design" -- Branch Rickey

    -----Original Message-----
    From: gnso-rpm-wg-bounces at icann.org [mailto:gnso-rpm-wg-bounces at icann.org] On Behalf Of J. Scott Evans via gnso-rpm-wg
    Sent: Thursday, April 06, 2017 8:08 AM
    To: George Kirikos
    Cc: gnso-rpm-wg at icann.org
    Subject: Re: [gnso-rpm-wg] Action Items, Slides and Notes from the Working Group call held earlier today

    The same logic applies to you and other domaines, cybersquatters, speculators and small businesses. The fact that you want to arbitrage in terms that are also trademarks is your choice and you have to deal with the barriers put in place to deal with the bad actors.

    Sent from my iPhone

    > On Apr 6, 2017, at 4:59 AM, George Kirikos <icann at leap.com> wrote:
    > 
    > Hi folks,
    > 
    >> On Thu, Apr 6, 2017 at 4:19 AM, Beckham, Brian <brian.beckham at wipo.int> wrote:
    >> Finally, since the chart references the EFF letter, it is worth 
    >> mentioning here that the fact that a trademark owner may pay 
    >> (sometimes extremely high
    >> amounts) to defensively register a domain name exactly matching its 
    >> trademark in a Sunrise process (and thereby taking it “off the 
    >> market”) does not prevent free expression, which may be undertaken in 
    >> countless other ways.  The number of terms that may be appended to a 
    >> trademark (not to mention typos) to engage in all manner of speech – 
    >> fair or otherwise – is, practically-speaking, all but limitless.
    > 
    > By that "logic", the number of terms that may be appended to a common 
    > dictionary word (not to mention typos) to create a trademarkable brand 
    > is, practically-speaking, all but limitless. :-)
    > 
    > In other words, those creating a new brand/trademark certainly had the 
    > opportunity to create a longer (and thus inferior) alternative to a 
    > commonly used dictionary word or other common term. The fact that they 
    > decided instead to choose a common term that is widely used by the 
    > public shouldn't give them any priority access in a launch of a new 
    > gTLD.
    > 
    > "I created a problem for myself, and I want ICANN to fix it" is the 
    > essence of the sunrise argument for commonly used terms, like 
    > dictionary words and short acronyms.
    > 
    > Sincerely,
    > 
    > George Kirikos
    > 416-588-0269
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