Monte: If you’re what is the best trademark that can cover you, or what is the best way to cover yourself internationally then? If you want to protect your world intellectual property rights on a domain name, what would you recommend?
Stephen: I would recommend getting a community trademark.
Monte: A community trademark. Now how would you go about filing for a community trademark?
Stephen: Say that again.
Monte: How does one go about getting that?
Stephen: Most of the time, you’re going to pick up the phone and call your attorney. It is possible to do it without an attorney. It’s tough. It’s pretty complicated. We charge $3500 to get a community trademark. That’s about average.
Monte: Okay, how does it carry weight internationally across international borders?
Stephen: Well a community trademark covers the whole of the European community.
Monte: Oh, okay. So it’s a European based trademark. So if I was in Asia, would it carry more weight than a federal trademark in the United States?
Stephen: No, about the same.
Monte: About the same but at least it protects you in Europe and the European Union and then a federal trademark. So if you had both a European trademark through a community trademark and a federal trademark here in the United States, you’re pretty golden?
Stephen: You’re pretty covered because if you look at the people who are the panelists for WIFO, you’re going to notice . . .
Monte: They’re from all those countries.
Stephen: Right.
Monte: They’re very rarely have somebody from anywhere else.
Stephen: Yeah. I haven’t seen too many to be perfectly honest. There’s definitely some folks from Africa. I’ve actually never filed any of the African trademarks. But they’re out there and there’s nothing wrong with using them.
Monte: What about Asia? Anything that covers over there?
Stephen: There are some Asian trademarks. You have to file them directly as far as I know. I’m not the expert on filing in Asia either. We do have other people in the office who have done that a lot more than myself.
Monte: Given that you have a lot of Middle-eastern clients, what’s the rules down there? That must vary a lot.
Stephen: They’re, let’s see if I can find it real quick. There is a combined filing, I can find it but it’s going to take a second.
Monte: Oh, that’s okay.
Stephen: There is a combined filing over there in I think there’s five different countries. If I go to, I think its called Kuwaitlaw.net but let me check. It covers Kuwait, Quatar, Oman, KSA, Berain, and . . .
Monte: Okay. So it covers the Middle-eastern Arab countries?
Stephen: Right. It’s one application for six member states.
Monte: Oh wow.
Stephen: And I’ve actually only filed that once. Honestly, I’m sure people over there are filing them all the time but you have to be an expert. You can’t be an expert in every single area.
Monte: Well that’s great. It’s been a great pleasure having you Stephen. I didn’t know we’d be able to eat up the whole hour with you. It’s amazing because our first show we were like, how is this domain law so interesting? There’s so many things going on with the different changes, with the WIFO decisions that are happening and the cases like you just had with kiwi.com and John had a couple of famous cases occur and RA Kohlberger and the whole sex.com case how it was determined that domain names are now property. You can definitely have a property value assigned to it.
Stephen: Right. That’s only in the ninth circuit.
Monte: Right, only in the ninth circuit. But still, at least it’s established somewhere. Then with the whole ICANN changes and policy and then with the new transfer out policy, you know there’s a lot of things to cover. That’s why we feel its important that we cover our basis and covering this issue with domain law on a regular basis because its not only interesting but its important as we get into this new industry of domain names that we are covering ourselves and we are protecting our assets and that we’re looking at all angles to be successful so that we all can work together and be safe from people and companies that are not on the same page.
Stephen: Absolutely.
Monte: So I really appreciate your time. I’d love to have you on again in a month or so and would welcome any other topics that you’d like to talk about.
Stephen: Well thank you very much Monte.
Monte: Well thank you very much. Thanks to everyone that’s been listening. Thank you to our sponsors and join us next week. We’re going to have a great show again on webmaster radio and domain masters will be on every Wednesday at 7:00 eastern standard time. Please give me some feedback, monte@moniker.com. Talk to me in the chat room for a couple minutes after the show. Give me some more suggestions. We’ll try and get as many people on as possible to make this show very useful for you and valuable. Thanks again and we’ll see you next week.
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