Centraal forms Net naming policy review board
A start-up hoping to change the way users call up Web sites asks a group of Net luminaries to help it head off potential liability created when multiple companies claim rights to a name.
Centraal, maker of the RealNames Web directory, named former commissioner of the Federal Trade Commission Christine Varney; Lori Fena, chair of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and chair of the privacy certification group Truste; and Andrew Bridges, Centraal's Internet and intellectual property lawyer at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati to a policy advisory board.
Centraal's RealNames directory allows users to pinpoint specific pages on a company's Web site that correspond to particular goods or services. A user looking for information about Pepsi One, a new soft drink, can find a link to the specific page that advertises it on Pepsi Cola's Web site.
The board's formation comes as the nonprofit organization assuming control of many of the Internet's crucial functions--the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN)--is forging its own policy for resolving trademark disputes on the Internet.
Network Solutions, which until recently was the sole registrar of the most popular forms of Internet addresses, used to face similar exposure. Early on, companies that believed a domain name was improperly registered to someone else frequently brought NSI into the fray, claiming that the act of registering the name contributed to trademark infringement.
A series of court decisions has since let NSI off the hook, finding that NSI's actions as a registrar lack the commercial elements necessary to bring a trademark suit.
Centraal, however, is not likely to benefit from that line of court rulings, said Sally Abel, a trademark attorney at Fenwick & West.
"They obviously want to avoid litigation as much as possible," Abel added.
Internet users have been complaining for years that the system for finding products and services on the Net is far from perfect. RealNames' method of directing users to sites based on product names rather than sometimes complicated addressing schemes has attracted the attention of a number of big-name investors, including NSI, Idealab, and Draper Fisher Jurvetson.
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