DO NO HARM.

A judge issues a court ruling that classes of goods and service no longer provide a basis for trademarks. (see http://www.icbtollfree.com/article.cfm?articleId=1282)

Another, an arbitration decision praising the domain holder's 'clearly demonstrated good faith intentions' and disparaging the claimant's 'nonsensical' and 'disingenuous' claims. He then contradicts his own findings, and rules in favor of the claimant. (see http://www.icbtollfree.com/article.cfm?articleId=1286)

Daily we watch, exasperated, as new rulings wrongly favor claimants in crass violation of law, common sense, and property rights.

Yesterday's Wall Street Journal ran an editorial by Lawrence Lessig, Harvard Law School Professor and author of 'Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace', in which he writes,

'...in practically every other context of e-commerce regulation, the practice of our government has been not to apply the old rules but to wait and see. Congress supported a moratorium on Internet taxation ... The Federal Trade Commission held off regulating online privacy ... And the Federal Communications Commission refused to enforce open-access requirements in broadband cable, in part because we don't yet know how the market will evolve. In each area, the government has hesitated before regulating -- at least until officials are satisfied the regulation will do no harm.'

Professor Lessig speaks above not of trademarks but patents, continuing,

'No one predicted the extraordinary innovation that the patent-free Internet produced. It surprised us, and this surprise should indicate that there is something to learn. But we learn not by training the mandarins of our culture -- lawyers and judges -- on the question of whether 'patenting this is just like patenting that.' We learn by studying the economics of the field. Such study takes time. It requires serious and balanced inquiry by investigators without an interest in the result.'

Yet it's all too apparent that the lawyers and judges Professor Lessig speaks of, programmed(tm) that 'trademarking this is just like trademarking that,' are misapplying and falling far short of whatever good intent could be attributed to trademark rules and law.

Harm is being done. It should be stopped.

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