While I find the discussion mundane, you don't have to be a card carrying
lawyer to have a business sense and understanding of the law and how it
applies in your products.
Our (Santronics) would prefer to have all 3rd party trademark issues
resolved for 3rd party trademark product documentation disclaimers. The
preference is not to waste resources in documentation (including printed
manuals = $$$) with incorrect disclaimers.
It would be ideal to have all IP issues resolved before technical
implementation is considered.
From a personal opinion, as for domainkeys.com, they can tell Yahoo to go
fly a kite. This has nothing to do with the "Greater Good" which has yet
to be proven. This is clearly a infringement. But that's between them and
if Yahoo believes its worth the effort, they may try buy the trademark.
But small company or not, this is was a brand name within the same trade
since 1999. I would find it unrealistic to give it up because of some
people think it is for the "Greater Good."
The simple solution is to come up with better unique name. How hard will
that be? After all, Yahoo and Cisco both have the resources to do the
trademark search which also includes these days using google as part of your
search.
--
Hector Santos, Santronics Software, Inc.
http://www.santronics.com
----- Original Message -----
From: "Hallam-Baker, Phillip" <pbaker(_at_)verisign(_dot_)com>
To: "william(at)elan.net" <william(_at_)elan(_dot_)net>;
<domainkeys-feedbackbase02(_at_)yahoo(_dot_)com>
Cc: "IETF MASS WG" <ietf-mailsig(_at_)imc(_dot_)org>
Sent: Monday, June 06, 2005 9:52 AM
Subject: RE: DomainKeys trademark issue (was: Yahoo!'s DomainKeys and
Cisco's IIM have merged)
Since none of us are lawyers here this is not a useful discussion.
Having been in the middle of trademark disputes and claims involving the
common law tort 'passing off' I do not find William's analysis
persuasive.
The simplest solution to this problem is probably going to involve
making the owner of the domainkeys.com domain name realize that the
brand equity in DKIM is considerably larger than that he appears to have
built in the domain independently. Ergo his most profitable and
beneficial course of action is likely to be to develop a business model
that allows him to take advantage of the additional brand equity in the
name he has received at no cost to himself.
-----Original Message-----
From: owner-ietf-mailsig(_at_)mail(_dot_)imc(_dot_)org
[mailto:owner-ietf-mailsig(_at_)mail(_dot_)imc(_dot_)org] On Behalf Of
william(at)elan.net
Sent: Sunday, June 05, 2005 11:17 PM
To: domainkeys-feedbackbase02(_at_)yahoo(_dot_)com
Cc: 'IETF MASS WG'
Subject: Re: DomainKeys trademark issue (was: Yahoo!'s
DomainKeys and Cisco's IIM have merged)
On Sun, 5 Jun 2005 domainkeys-feedbackbase02(_at_)yahoo(_dot_)com wrote:
That's hilarious. Reams of legal advice and FUD followed by the
fine-print.
First of all its hilarious that you let the situation gone
this far and then still continue to claim in public that
domainkeys is yahoo's
trademark.
And please read my post again - there was no "advice" there
until after
IANAL (I only discussed what could happen, but that was just
open list
discussion of the issues involved).
And BTW - I gave good advise and appropriate warning that
others including lawyers would give as well if you tell them
about what happened and its not exactly as its something new
that has never happened before. And I'm
sorry if you did not listen to me the first time and did not
take this
issue seriously.
It's not the big, bad companies that I would worry about - they are
under lots of scrutiny. As for the individuals with unscruitinized
private agendas - that's another matter entirely.
I'm a lot more worried about private agendas of big
companies. I really do not see anything indicating that
companies being under scrutiny would somehow change their own
agenda, especially if its kept private. And from
what I have seen the bigger the company the more likely it is
to ignore
wishes of the public or advise of technical people and try to
slam the
ill-advises solutions on us and this has hurt standards several times
before... At least for small companies and individuals there
is no easy
way to force others to comply with what they propose and it
goes through appropriate review without external pressure.
As for me, I think everyone knows that I'm interested in not
seeing something become an internet standard if there are
restrictions on how it can be used such as with trademarks or
patents with licenses that
restrict use by certain segment of the software industry or
if there are restrictions on any email users. If you want to
call it a "private agenda" please go ahead, I don't mind.
P.S. I'm tired of this issue, its not technical and its not a
WG or last
call scenario. I continue to hope that my advise be taken
more seriously
and not ignored as I've pretty good track record of being
right and predict problems several months or years in advance
and I'm not interested in continuing to repeat "I told you
so" because too many people don't seem to like to hear the
truth. In any case its my last post on this thread.
--
William Leibzon
Elan Networks
william(_at_)elan(_dot_)net