Protection of federally registered trademarks

[RoseMarie Dorer <rdorer@toad.net>]

Companies who have the responsibility of assigning Internet addresses and
allowing use of names, should also have a reasonable responsibility of
accessing the trademark database to verify that a name is or is not
trademarked before issuing an address for a name.

As a trademark owner, I feel that people who have taken the time to go
through the process of choosing a name and registering it for sole
ownership should have priority over those who infringe on the mark. I also
think the process of proving ownership should not be so cumbersome as what
InterNIC requires. The owner should not have to do all the work--the
infringer should have the onus of proving they own it. After all, the
people who own a trademark have done their homework already. If the
infringer had, extra work wouldn't be required.

Further, names that are "confusingly similar" (in any category, i.e. org,
edu, com, etc.) should not be issued at all, unless it is to the owner of
the mark for which it sounds confusingly similar.

InterNIC let someone else register my federally registered mark and now I
can't use it. I have an injunction against the person who registered the
name but, InterNIC won't release it to me so I can use it. If someone
registers a name that belongs to a trademark holder, that name should be
released to the person who owns the trademark, without any cost to the
trademark owner as a matter of principal because (knowingly or unknowingly)
an infringer had broken the law. With a little homework, the infringer
might have elected not to break the law. It's a small price to pay for what
could end up to be a huge lawsuit for infringement.

I'm tired of the battles in which these people involve me without my
consent because they didn't bother to check all quirks of ownership of a
name before registering it. Trademark owners shouldn't be penalized for
their ignorance.

RoseMarie Dorer
The Write Word (R)