Re: [Fwd: [wg-b] "Oops" domains: La illah wa allah wa muhammad rasulbuyuk....]

[Harald Tveit Alvestrand <Harald@alvestrand.no>]

At 15:34 08.09.99 -0400, Martin B. Schwimmer wrote:

>The concept of 10,000 famous marks in a country is a little unusual. How
>many of those are in katakana? Japan encouraged ex parte applications to
>have one's mark declared to be famous, at one point, and that was regarded
>by some (including my clients) as a scam.
>
>I might be merely guessing about jelly beans in a jar, but I would be
>surprised if more than 10,000 TM owners worldwide would participate in the
>exclusion process, and likely fewer would participate in a fame claim list.

I took two lessons from the Japanese exercise:

- Fame is generally a local mattter
- Given a process to be declared famous, MANY parties will participate.

The strong resistance of WIPO towards making any sort of limit, or even 
state in public a "target range" for the number of famous marks, was a 
point of contention during the experts' meeting.

Consider: If you were trademark responsible for someone holding a mark that 
*might* be ruled famous if considered, its annual revenues are in the 
billion-dollar range, and participating in the process cost you a few 
thousands of dollars, wouldn't you be remiss in *not* participating?

Scrabble?

                         Harald

--
Harald Tveit Alvestrand, Maxware, Norway
Harald.Alvestrand@maxware.no