Geoff,

>There is no such thing as "a trademark".  There is such a thing as
>"a trademark qualified by a service category".

>Given that withinthe trademark world two completely different
>entities can quite properly and correctly trade using the same
>trademarked name, then please explain to me how BOTH parties can
>'protect' their trademark from each other as well as from other
>within a single domain name, whether its .com.au, .tm.au or
>.garbage.au.

Hmmm, we seem to be a cross purposes somehow - the intent of my
previous posting obviously was not made clear by me.

My fundamental starting point is that it is impossible for trademark
owners to 'protect' their trademark in the DNS and the sooner they
all realise that, the better off we and they will be.

>Attempting to map external name structures into the DNS
>won't work. Its a waste of time even trying.

Well, it won't work in any level of the DNS that is not restricted -
my understanding is it could be made to work in a lower level domain
with an exact match:

 - eg an x.tm.au or xtm.au where the 'x' represented the relevant
category

or work for 95% of the trademarks which only exist in one category
by:

.tm.au

Whether either of those options would be of value to the general
trademark owning community and the broader user community is
debateable.  That's my concern about the meeting - I think everyone
considered the issues from the 'how do I protect my trademark'
issue, and the 'is there any value in having a subset of the DNS
that does match my trademark' was not properly considered - so we
still don't have an answer to that one.

As a representative of a company that owns a trademark or two in one
category, I think there may be some value in a subset of the DNS
devoted exclusively to trademarks.  Just as its possible there may
be some value in subsets devoted to educational organisations or to
government organisations.

Regards, Mark


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*  Message From : HUGHES, MARK          *
*  Location     : AUSTRALIA-CCA HDQ     *
*  KOMAIL ID    : N17503  (CCAMCQN1)    *
*  Date and Time: 12/03/97  12:34:03    *
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