How does this cover the action along the hypothetical lines of:

"You are using my name acme in your use of acme.com.au. I have
 been damaged. The registry is a party to this action. I wish to you sue
 you and the registry for damage you have done to my company."

Interplead all you like - its not the right to use the name thats the massive
issue - its the damages arising from misuse of someone else's
name which cause the largest gleam in the lawyers' sights.


Geoff


At 4:19 PM 3/12/96, Nick Bannon wrote:
>Glen Turner wrote:
>> Regarding company name dispute resolution:
>
>> Given Australia has a small number of states (unlike the US),
>> and thus a small number company name registers, perhaps
>> the DNS name should include a company register identifier?
>
>> This would move disputes over names out of the DNS arena
>> entirely.
>
>This, and DNS registry-protecting legislation, may not be necessary.
>
>Out of curiosity - why have those involved in this proposal, as well as
>those involved with Melbourne IT, rejected the use of "interpleader" as
>expounded upon at ;
>http://www.patents.com/nsi/iip.sht
>? I'm all for diversity of policies, but, so far, it seems to me to be a
>particularly elegant method of dispute resolution.
>
>That is - Party A successfully applies for foo.bar.au. Party B wants
>foo.bar.au and is prepared to sue for it. The DNS registry formally
>tenders the "right to use" foo.bar.au to a court with jurisdiction
>over it, and advises the court that it will dispose of the asset in
>accordance with the court's orders. Party A is served with papers
>inviting it to participate in the interpleader action. The parties
>present their cases, the court decides who gets the domain, and that
>should be the end of the matter.
>
>This is all under the assumption that interpleader is valid under
>Australian law, of course. Whilst the dispute is in progress, the
>registry continues to administrate for party A - processing transactions,
>etc. - normally. If a given transaction is not completed when a ruling is
>made, a refund minus an administrative fee would be in order.
>
>Even a simple First-Come-First-Served registration policy should work
>under such a system, and I don't see that any other given policy would
>stop it from working. It's good in that the registry is merely doing up
>front what it would have been forced to do anyway, should one of the
>parties decide to be difficult.
>
>This _can_ be unfair to those who by rights should have foo.bar.au, but
>can't afford representation as good as that of the other party, but the
>same goes for the current policies - removing the registry from the loop
>doesn't change that. It's much better than the registry "backing the
>wrong horse" and going bankrupt defending itself.
>
>Nick.

-- 
Geoff.Huston§telstra.net

Network Technical Manager    Locked Bag 5744,
Telstra Internet             Canberra  ACT  2601
                             AUSTRALIA

ph  +61 6 208 1908
fax +61 6 248 6165


-----------------------
And as a quick postscript to those cut and paste reporters lurking
out there...

Copyright of this message is asserted by Geoff Huston
Permission to reproduce this message in whole or in part in any medium
other than the Internet is expressly NOT provided by the copyright owner.
-----------------------