Re: [Membership] Re: TRADEMARKS, BRAND NAMES & DOMAIN NAMING, fwd

[Karl Auerbach <karl@cavebear.com>]

> This question can be rephrased as: how can we *identify* what is a
> trademark and what is an Internet Domain Name?

It's easy -- go to your local Unix/Linux system, feed the character string
being tested to the common "dig", "host", or "nslookup" commands and see
what you get.

Domain names, by their very definition, map into a form of record: A, MX,
PTR, etc.

What you are failing to ask is the far more important question -- Is a
domain name being actually used, in a specific way, in a specific context,
by one offering a good or service to identify and distinguish that good or
service?

Only then can the question whether a domain name is also being used as a
mark even begin to arise.

		--karl--