The Law of Domain names is already creating confusions all through
the Cyber society. WIPO thinks that any company which has a trademark
in a geographical area can claim a domain name related to the trade mark
as a matter of right. This well intentioned suggestion has been much
abused by the Trademark owners who today object to use of any variation
of the trade mark or an existing domain name even though the possibilities
of a consumer getting confused is non existent.
As a result, one trade mark today can be used to claim rights
on thousands of other domain names through name and TLD extensions.
With over 240 country codes and many of the registrars having created
sub domains such as ".co", ".org", ".ltd", ".plc", ".net", ".sch", ".ac",
".gov", ".nhs", ".police", and ".mod" the number of domain names that can
be immobilized by one registered trade mark is almost infinite.
ICANN's new TLDs as well as the private initiatives of New.net will
create further problems with another 27 TLD s to play with. Now to the
list of disputed names will be added the language names. VeriSign Global
Registry Services is now accepting domain registrations in the .com, .net
and .org top-level domains using "native language characters" in the second-level
domain. Even before these language domain names come to wide usage,
the domain name disputes have already started.
It is reported that The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO)
has resolved what appears to be the first dispute over a multilingual domain
name in favor of Sankyo Co., Ltd., Japan's second-largest pharmaceutical
company against an individual in China, Zhu Jiajun, who registered
a domain name consisting of the two Japanese kanji characters representing
"Sankyo" and the English-language characters ".com.".
What has the future in store for Domain Name owners? Is WIPO aware of
the consequences of trying to resolve disputes in an area where even experts
in the respective language can often make mistakes?
After all, WIPO recently showed that it cannot understand the culture
of a big country like India by trying to ascribe Trade Mark right on the
word "Maruti" which is the name of an Indian God. Can WIPO be able to sit
in judgment of the meanings of different words in different languages such
as Japanese, Chinese, Tamil or Kannada?. Take the example www.gandhi.com.
In Tamil there is no difference between www.gandhi.com and www.kanthi.com.
Because a person owns www.gandhi.com, will WIPO rule against
another person owning a Tamil domain name www.kanthi.com? How many
more such problems may arise in the innumerable languages in which the
world communicates today, no body knows.
WIPO will soon find out that it is taking upon itself a responsibility
and setting a precedent which it cannot sustain.
Naavi
April 10, 2001
Report
in InternetWorld.com
Do readers have a views on this? or suggestions?. If so, Your
views can be sent here
