Re: [NEW ISSUE] 4103 Questionable use of Contoso Ltd in Primer

Fabian,

example.com is reserved domain name per RFC2606
        http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2606

I don't think that it would be likely that a company would register itself 
under that name
given that the domain name is unavailable for registration... Not a very 
good marketing
idea given that you could not have a web presence with that name.

We could always resort to "Company A".

The fact that Contoso is registered to Microsoft I think makes my point.
If Microsoft were to transfer the ownership of that name to W3C, or 
provide written
permission authorizing W3C to use that name in this context, that that 
might resolve the 
issue. 

Cheers,

Christopher Ferris
STSM, Software Group Standards Strategy
email: chrisfer@us.ibm.com
blog: http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/blogs/page/chrisferris
phone: +1 508 377 9295



Fabian Ritzmann <Fabian.Ritzmann@Sun.COM> 
Sent by: public-ws-policy-request@w3.org
12/21/2006 01:05 PM

To
Christopher B Ferris/Waltham/IBM@IBMUS
cc
public-ws-policy@w3.org
Subject
Re: [NEW ISSUE] 4103 Questionable use of Contoso Ltd in Primer







While example.com is a reserved domain name, isn't there still a chance 
that somebody registers a company Example.com and sues W3C for trademark 
infringement [1]?

Contoso is a company name registered by Microsoft:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fictitious_company_names_used_by_Microsoft


Ideally, the W3C would register a company name for similar uses in all 
countries where they don't want to be sued for trademark or similar 
infringements...

Fabian


Christopher B Ferris wrote:
> http://www.w3.org/Bugs/Public/show_bug.cgi?id=4103
>
> Title: Questionable use of fictitious corp. name "Contoso Ltd."
>
> Description: The Primer uses a fictitious corporation name, Contoso 
Ltd.,
> throughout the Primer in its running example. It isn't clear that use 
> of such a
> fictitious name, without w3c copyright/trademark ownership, is 
advisable.
> Should a company be incorporated with that name, then the Policy 1.5 
> primer
> would be in essence providing it with free advertising... Worse, the 
> company
> might sue the W3C for copyright/trademark infringement.
>
> Justification: see description
>
> Proposed Resolution: Change all occurances of "Contoso" and/or 
> "Contoso Ltd."
> to "Example.com" and change all "real.contoso.com" domain references to
> "example.com".
>
> Cheers,
>
> Christopher Ferris
> STSM, Software Group Standards Strategy
> email: chrisfer@us.ibm.com
> blog: http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/blogs/page/chrisferris
> phone: +1 508 377 9295 


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Fabian Ritzmann
Sun Microsystems, Inc.
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