At 10:27 AM 5/2/98 -0400, John Hermanson wrote:
>
>Gee, let's see how it goes if that ever happens. Domains on the net are first
>come first served. I would have used Camtech first, then Olympus, but they
>were both taken.
>It is hypothetical what I might do if Olympus asked to use the name. Or would
>they try to register it, see that its being used, and then simply move on to
>an available domain?
John (and others):
The InterNIC has a domain name dispute resolution policy, which can be found at
http://rs.internic.net/domain-info/internic-domain-6.html
If Olympus wants the second-level domain name "zuiko" from J.H. (note that I
did *not* say "...*back* from J.H."), they would be required to follow the
policy. By registering the domain name "zuiko.com," John has represented to
the InterNIC that, to the best of his knowledge, such registration has not
infringed the rights of any third party (i.e., the Olympus Optical Company of
Japan). This may surprise some of you, but I learned something strange when I
was building the Unofficial Olympus Web Photo Gallery: the word "Olympus" is,
to the best of my knowledge, *not* trademarked! (I nevertheless state on the
Photo Gallery page that it *is* trademarked, and show it with a trademark
symbol, simply to cover my precious hiney, in case my admittedly incomplete
research is in error...).
As far as Oly's concerned, this may not matter. Since they are a world-wide
organization with a presence in a multitude of countries, they're probably best
served by using the country's top-level domain, and putting Olympus in as a
second- or third-level domain, as is the case in Japan, where their main URL is
http://www.olympus.co.jp
This is the way the InterNIC has *always* encouraged multi-national commercial
enterprises to register: the country code first (i.e., farthest to the right,
since domain names are resolved right-to-left), the "co" second-level domain
next, and then the company name. (British commercial orgs use this same naming
convention.) American organizations have almost always violated this rule, and
so the unofficial belief now is that a world-wide organization should be in the
top-level ".com" domain (my company does this, even though it's presently
restricted to doing business in the province of Alberta, Canada).
John's perfectly within his rights to register "zuiko.com", just as long as
he's willing to take the potential risks later on. They're probably small.
But the fundamental rule, as he stated earlier, is "first come, first served."
Everything else simply modifies this rule.
Garth Wood
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