Re: [PHP-DEV] php.org and www.motherboards.com From: Marko Karppinen (markonen <email protected>)
Date: 11/13/00

Zeev wrote:

> Does anybody know if we have any options to go about this? Legal
> perhaps? We can obviously send an army of furious people down his mailbox,
> but I'm not sure if it'll be of any use (it might). Bad publicity can suck
> pretty much, especially when he's being extremely ungrateful, considering
> his entire site is PHP based. Perhaps we can use clause 3 of the license
> here? Any lawyers on board? :)

Unfortunately the ICANN domain name dispute resolution policy is difficult
to apply in this situation. In order to dispute a domain name that someone
else is holding, you basically have to own a trademark or service mark that
is identical with the domain name held. (In this case, PHP.)

The funny thing is that the policy is somewhat asymmetric: if someone tried
to take php.net away from us, for example, we could defend ourselves by
arguing that "[we] (as an individual, business, or other organization) have
been commonly known by the domain name, even if [we] have acquired no
trademark or service mark rights". This doesn't, however, work the other way
around: it's not possible to use this legimate interest in the PHP name to
try to take it away from others.

The only reasonable way to get the domain under the current policy would be
to actually go ahead and register the trademark PHP. I feel that Rasmus
should do this (it doesn't cost much, and can be even done online at
uspto.gov), very much Linus himself owns the Linux trademark.

I'm afraid that a pending trademark doesn't help with a domain name dispute,
so it would be a multi-year wait anyway. But there's no reason to put this
off. 

-- 
markonen <email protected>

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