Re: The Path URN Specification - trademarks

John Curran wrote:
|Is there an implicit assumption regarding the relationship between
|the "ownership" of a given DNS domain and an associated subdomain
|under the "path.urn" space?   Is there explicitly no relationship?
|
|It might be a good idea to have some discussion in the document about
|the operational and administrative impacts of this mapping approach.


Michael Shapiro wrote:
|I'm uncertain as to the content of such a discussion. Would it be a
|suggestion for the top level names (or perhaps even one or two levels
|down).  How did the existing set of DNS domains get instituted? How
|would this discussion diverge from the (existing) discussions about
|hostnames?

John Curran wrote:
|The existing set of DNS domains are allocated based on policies which
|are currently undergoing legal scrutiny with respect to the trademark
|infringement.  We need to consider before recommending the establishment
|of a second name space which will certainly garner similiar actions...   

This is an issue I was unaware of. Can you elaborate on these legal
issues?  Would there be trouble if someone used "kleenex" in the name
of a document? (e.g. /A/B/C/mymail/kleenex/msg.1)  Is this only a
problem for DNS names? Is this an objection to even considering the
path scheme? Or is this a problem for any naming scheme that allowed
trademarked words to appear as part of the name. And even so, is this
enough of a reason to disallow such a naming scheme? When does trademark
infringement occur?

-- 
Michael Shapiro                   mshapiro@ncsa.uiuc.edu
NCSA                              (217) 244-6642
605 E Springfield Ave. RM 152CAB  fax: (217) 333-5973
Champaign, IL 61820

Received on Tuesday, 28 March 1995 15:11:37 UTC