I'll top-post because I'm not responding to anything specific, just adding some points: It's worse, much worse! USPTO/WIPO use product categories so to some approximation it's ok that Delta Airlines and Delta Faucets both exist. In a phrase the guiding principle is any possibility of consumer confusion (I KNOW IT'S MORE COMPLICATED THAN THAT!) So one might have thought huzzah, new gTLDs, now we might have DELTA.AIRLINES and DELTA.FAUCETS etc. And in particular many smaller and/or newer concerns that missed out on THEIR-MARK.COM (ORG, BIZ, etc) will get a chance and even some sort of preferential treatment. They'd have some sort of priority in the TLD matching their bona-fide product category! That new startup Delta Automobiles (made that up) might have a chance at DELTA.CARS! But no, ICANN produced just about the exact opposite by creating a Sunrise period where for example Delta Airlines could hop in and register DELTA.CARS by just showing that they have a TM on "Delta", in any product category, so whenever Delta Automobiles arose tough luck! And, to throw salt on that wound, they allowed registrars to grab something like DELTA.CARS, declare it a "premium domain", and immediately put it up for sale for $20K or more (or less, their choice.) I know because I ran into that. I was literally 15 minutes late trying to sunrise register a domain I only sort of deserved (it was a product category listed on a TM we had USPTO/WIPO registered), they let me register it. And then an hour later said sorry oops our error you were 15 minutes late but you can buy it from us for (yes this was the number) $20,000. And it remains for sale six years later as a "platinum" domain, I just checked. I don't care much but I wanted to indicate this isn't a hypothetical, this stuff really happens, it's happened to me. On February 23, 2022 at 16:25 evan@telly.org (Evan Leibovitch) wrote:
On Mon, Feb 21, 2022 at 6:19 PM Barry Shein via At-Large < at-large@atlarge-lists.icann.org> wrote:
As I've said for decades: Notice that WIPO, USPTO, et al don't allow you to just register and squat on interesting strings. Or have rules which make that a useless endeavor ("use it or lose it", etc.)
That's not due to a lack of imagination.
And yet ICANN knew better, deliberately avoiding the same ethos. Here, any collection of symbols is a commodity suitable for rent-seeking (both literally and figuratively). Barry even demonstrated this point by indicating that the new unregulated emoji system is ripe for exploitation, a necessary element truly to bring it inline with everything else in today's DNS.
That was my first clue coming in that ICANN's main non-technical policy function was (and still is) to legitimize the grift. Unfortunately it took me nearly a decade to figure out that At-Large as currently constituted, cowed by budget restraints and the need to be loved by the grifters, provides cover for them while perfecting the art of bikeshedding. What I thought was a glimmer of light last year -- funds allocation to do an end-user survey about trust -- has been co-opted by this culture and (at the time I disengaged) had mutated into market research for Universal Acceptance. So much for hope. Just my opinions of course.
- Evan
-- -Barry Shein Software Tool & Die | bzs@TheWorld.com | http://www.TheWorld.com Purveyors to the Trade | Voice: +1 617-STD-WRLD | 800-THE-WRLD The World: Since 1989 | A Public Information Utility | *oo*