On Friday, 15 December 2000 at 3:19pm Doug Robb wrote:

> Just as an aside - the reason I was surprised about the list
> of domains names that have been transferred is that in some
> cases the derived words (and numbers even) seemed to me to
> be quite remote derivations compared with what the trade
> marks office and ASIC would allow themselves.

Doug

The issue with domain names takes into account a functional element.  For
example, bigpons.com is only one key away from bigpond.com.  The benefit of
having that over say bigpony.com is that people accidentally miss the "d"
key and press "s", thereby reaching the near miss site.  This issue is not
relevant to company names or trade marks per se.

Cheers
Tony Cooke

Senior Associate
Deacons, Lawyers

p: (03) 9230 0678