I agree entirely and bought it up at the time however the trademark
obsessed jugggernaut won't be stopped. As you say all they doing is
creating a parallel sphere with exactly the same arbitration problems, no
doubt resolved by the shallow approach of first come first served.

Warm regards
Gary

At 11:49 16/05/98 +1000, you wrote:
>In my opinion the idea being proposed by ADNA and Professor Gerrand to add
two new domains being tm.au and pr.au is not wise. The current problem with
>com.au is that business are finding it hard to register their trademarks
and product names. I don't understand the reason why Melbourne IT will not
allow this, as this is what there policy of "attempting to derive a domain
name from the  commercial entities legal name is all about".
>
>If we assume that Melbourne IT is correct in not allowing certain
tradenames under .com.au and we allow them to register under tm.au we are
going to face
>massive new problems.
>
>For those who do not understand trademarks, a company that owns a
registered trademark only owns it with respect to certain type of goods and
services. For
>example Prince owns an Australian trademark for tennis racquets however a
computer company also owns a  trademark called prince. How will it be decided
>who has the superior right to prince.tm.au? In most cases there will be
more than 2 entities that own a registered trademark in respect of more than 2
>categories of goods thus the legal fights will be enormous.
>Thus we are back to the same problems as we have under .com.au exceptworse
because we are saying tm.au is reserved for trademarks, but whose trademark
is it reserved for?
>
> Any comments would be appreciated..
>
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