grandin

Tell them to pay up and give them a link to this thread. I deal is a deal....I am sure they will pay

The trade mark is very clever.....unique and descriptive of the class of goods. Could be argued that putting an i in front of a word is no longer unique.....maybe more generic given the onset of the web revolution.

Descriptive of the class of goods....no so descriptive given the word share could mean sharing information.....could have a forum named ishares but i suppose the more appropriate would be ishare....the plural may only mean shares as in stockmarket shares....the fact that binatone applied for a trade mark in the non plural could presume many uses....implying not belonging to anyone specific.

I can't see how they could force your hand on the back of this registration unless you 'passed off'

domaingenius

OK here is information on dates of the TM Barclays have ,which is only Class 36;
Filing date: 24.08.1999
Publication date: 06.03.2000
Registration date: 11.10.2000

The domain name ishares.co.uk was regged on
Registered on: 01-Sep-1999

Hmm, inside info OR ??. They file on 24th August you reg name on 1st Sept.
Maybe Barclays had used the name before applying for TM ?.

I would guess the latter perhaps. I would say that Barclays have scared you into selling, when in actuality you could have held on to it without breaching their TM. In DRS maybe you would have had to explain how you thought of name "ishares" especially if Barclays had been using it publicly before Sept 1999 ?.

DG

A-Wing

Reminds me of many moons ago when Intel tried to trademark the letter i for its i386/i387 and i486 CPUs. If I remember rightly that is why the i586 was renamed Pentium. But this was a long time ago now.

__________________
[SIZE="1"]Andrew Hutchings - Linux Jedi - http://www.linuxjedi.co.uk/
A-Wing Internet Services - http://www.a-wing.co.uk/[/SIZE]

grandin

Remember it is NOT unlawful to register a Trade Mark in the same text as an existing trade mark as long as you do not decide to infringe by selling in the same class or classes (there are also overlap classess that you also cant sell in).

Fundamentally Trade Mark law does not mix very well with domain name ownership and as such you must apply common sense.......if you try to take advantage of someonelses right then you deserve to be penalised........Trade Mark rights are changing and will change more so over time...............if you are first to a domain name then you have gained the right to derive the benefit of its use....like a bus station people pass through it....noone can stop people passing through it but you must not advertise your bus station as a railway station cause you do not own a railway station....you are a liar if you do so.

If the law wanted people to invent words and then keep those words to themselves then the Patent office would reflect this by NOT issuing Trade Marks in classes...........don't be bullied but don't be deceitful

Lee