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Edit: abaipl.sht

American Bar Association

Section of Intellectual Property Law

PATENT, TRADEMARK AND COPYRIGHT LAW:

LITIGATION AND CORPORATE PRACTICE

Domain Names: Past, Present &amp; Future

Carl Oppedahl

Oppedahl &amp; Larson

Frisco, Colorado

March 30-31, 1998

Washington, DC

Note: The law relating to domain names, trademark, and the Internet is developing quickly. Important
events and changes in the law during the interval between the press date for this paper (February 8,
1998) and the date of the program (March 30, 1998) will be reflected in an update appearing at
&lt;http://www.patents.com/pubs/abaipl.sht&gt;.

This paper discusses the following:

How can domain name owners keep their domain names?

How should we counsel clients selecting new domain names?

How can domain name disputes be creatively solved?

How can trademark owners police the Internet?

Meta-tags

<hr>

How can domain name owners keep their domain names?

I do intellectual property law. When I get a call, it is because someone invented something, or because
they have a problem. Dozens of times in recent months, the problem is that the client has received a
demand letter. The letter states that the client has registered a particular Internet domain name and that
this is supposedly infringing someone's legal rights. The clear message is that the client has to give up the
domain name or face unpleasant litigation.

Loss of a domain name can be big trouble. Some businesses are wholly dependent on their domain
names, and loss of the domain name would destroy the business. Think of Amazon.com, an online
bookstore that receives 100% of its business through its web site. Or Juno.com, an email service
provider that has a million email customers each of whose email addresses contains "juno.com".

Other businesses might not be destroyed by loss of a domain name, but would nonetheless be greatly
harmed. A company may spend large sums of money popularizing a particular web address (for
example, in television advertisements and in print media). Loss of the domain name could mean loss of
the benefits of the advertising efforts.

The Internet community, and the population at large, and likewise harmed when a domain name is lost.
Visitors to web sites that link to the lost domain name find that they click on links, and the links don't
work any more. Webmasters have to try to find out the new web address and, once they find it, have to
manually update their web sites. People who have bookmarked the web site find that the bookmark
doesn't work any more.

And domain names aren't just web addresses, they are also email addresses. People who have stored
email addresses in their email programs find that the email addresses don't work any more.

It might be suggested that loss of a domain name is no big deal, that the company that is about to lose a
domain name can simply inform everyone who needs to know of the new (replacement) domain name.
Such a suggestion misses the nature of the Internet. In general, it is impossible to find all the web sites
that link to one's own web site. It is impossible to find all the people whose web browsers have
bookmarks to one's own web site. it is impossible to find everyone who has set up one's email address
in their email program.

For all these reasons, and more, it is important to try to do everything possible to avoid loss of one's
domain name. What can be done?

Avoiding trademark infringement and dilution. An important step for any business is to take
reasonable steps to avoid infringing the trademark rights of others. And of course it has always been
prudent to do so, even long before the world of the Internet. Naming a company, naming a product,
naming a service, each has always required doing a trademark search and obtaining advice of
competent trademark counsel that the proposed name is free for use.

But this name clearance process is now more difficult, for two critical reasons: (1) the Internet, and (2)
the Federal Trademark Dilution Act.

Because of the Internet, the range of companies that might take offense at your client's domain name (or
other company or product name) is suddenly worldwide, and suddenly extends to all possible goods
and services. (Before the Internet, there were natural geographic and product line factors limiting who
might take offense.) Thus, clearing a name for use in Internet commerce requires searching in more
places, and for more possible conflicts, than was previously necessary.

Historically, the process of clearing a proposed name involved determining whether the proposed name
would cause confusion with respect to previously used names. Thus a company proposing to use the
name "Juno" in connection with providing email services would not have to worry much about a
company called Juno that made electric lighting equipment. One would not lead to confusion regarding
the other.

Unfortunately for those who are attempting to adopt new names for goods or services, in 1996
Congress passed the Federal Trademark Dilution Act (FTDA). This law removes the defense of lack
of confusion, and holds a company liable regardless of whether the company's mark causes confusion
or not. All that the challenger must establish is that its trademark is "famous" and that the accused
conduct began after the trademark became "famous". Even more unfortunately for those who are
attempting to adopt new names, Congress did not see fit to define "famous" but instead merely listed a
nonbinding group of eight factors which the court is to weigh in attempting to discern whether or not a
mark is "famous".

This means that a trademark search that is intended to uncover areas of possible liability under the
FTDA must cover all possible goods and services. And, since there is no way to know with any
confidence what trademarks might someday be deemed "famous" under the law (as distinguished from
"famous" according to the ordinary dictionary meaning of the term), then the evaluation of the search
results is quite difficult.

One protective strategy is the use of a newly coined name (e.g. Exxon, Kodak). Every
intellectual property practitioner has faced the client that cannot or will not coin a name for its new
business or product (e.g. the founder of a new travel agency that refuses to be counseled away from a
name like "World Wide Travel"). Despite the rarity of success in such counseling, we should continue
in efforts to convince clients to choose coined and unique names.

Obtaining a trademark registration (e.g. US or Tunisian). The majority of domain names are
obtained from Network Solutions Inc. ("NSI"), a government contractor. Under NSI's policy
(discussed further below) there is a great risk of loss of a domain name even if one is wholly innocent of
any trademark infringement. One way to alleviate this risk (at least, according to NSI's Fifth Policy,
keeping in mind that NSI might change it yet again) is by obtaining a trademark registration from
Tunisia. (It is necessary to obtain the registration chronologically prior to the challenge.)

Tunisia has the advantage that the trademark registration may be obtained within only a few days.

Action item: for any critical domain name administered by NSI (i.e. ending in COM, NET, or
ORG), obtain a Tunisian trademark registration.

One can also protect against NSI's Fifth Policy by obtaining a US trademark registration. The problem
with this, as most readers are well aware, is that it takes well over a year to obtain a US trademark
registration. Another is that many domain names will be refused registration by the USPTO for any of a
variety of reasons -- descriptiveness or genericness, lack of interstate commerce, lack of commerce at
all, lack of use to indicate origin. The USPTO recently announced new guidelines
(&lt;http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/tac/domain/tmdomain.htm&gt;) showing even more restrictiveness in
trademark registration of domain names: a domain name used merely in a web site to provide
information about goods or services will not be registered; the web site must actually deliver the
services for registration to be permitted.

Nonetheless it is prudent to obtain US trademark protection, not only due to NSI's Fifth Policy but also
for general business reasons.

Action item: review all of your clients' trademarks and tradenames, and apply for US
trademark registrations if this has not yet been done. Do this not only for domain names but
also for other important names.

Selecting a new domain name. For a client who is selecting a new domain name, it is important to
consider the advantages and disadvantages of the various registries and top-level domains (TLDs)
including two-letter country codes (e.g. ".US", ".CA"), the long-standing three-letter domains (e.g.
".COM", ".NET"), and the new gTLDs (e.g. ".FIRM", ".ARTS"). Some of the factors are business,
advertising, and promotional factors over which lawyers have no particular expertise. For example,
because ".COM" has been around for more than ten years, a television viewer who sees
"PERFECTION.FIRM" flash quickly across a TV screen may later type "PERFECTION.COM" at
the computer, out of a habitual assumption that most commercial domain names end in ".COM". The
most commonly used Web browsers reinforce this assumption by defaulting to an ending of ".COM" if
none is typed by the user. This and other factors make many clients unwilling to choose anything but a
COM domain name. It is difficult to predict how long it will take for the Internet-surfing public to shake
itself of its assumptions about ".COM". But Internet years are rather like dog years: the public may
become fully accustomed to the new gTLDs more quickly than many of our clients expect.

What lawyers can help their clients understand, when counseling them regarding the selection of domain
names, is that domain names vary greatly in terms of their vulnerability to loss. NSI has a terribly
flawed trademark mark domain name policy (now in its fifth version) in which NSI makes its decision to
cut off a domain name in secret, and doesn't tell the domain name owner until after the ex parte
proceedings are concluded. The domain name owner, amazingly, doesn't get to tell its side of the
story. NSI has made thousands of such decisions and does not keep an open record. This makes it
nearly impossible for a lawyer advising a client to predict what NSI will do next, and puts practitioners
in the position of exchanging anecdotes in an effort to discern how NSI interprets its policy. NSI's
policy ignores common-law trademark rights and makes no effort to determine if any actual
infringement of legal rights is occurring. NSI clings doggedly to its policy even when the result is
unmistakably wrong: when Juno Electric, a maker of light fixtures, asked NSI to cut off the domain
name of Juno Online, a provider of Internet email services, NSI agreed to do so. It was only during a
preliminary injunction hearing (in which Juno Online sought a court order that NSI not cut off the
domain name and its half a million email customers) that NSI backed down and agreed to scrap its
policy in that particular case.

NSI has a very odd view of its customers' rights. NSI has recently said that in its view, IBM has no
property interest in "IBM.COM", Kodak has no property interest in "KODAK.COM", and Xerox has
no property interest in "XEROX.COM".

Registrars providing the new gTLDs (e.g. FIRM, ARTS) are committed to a system of Adminstrative
Challenge Panels (ACPs) which offer a more generous helping of due process than does NSI. An
ACP conducts its deliberations on an open record, and the domain name owner is given the ability to
tell its side of the story. Preliminary injunctive relief, if any, is given only after inter partes proceedings.

The Magaziner Green Paper (&lt;http://www.ntia.doc.gov/ntiahome/domainname/dnsdrft.htm&gt;) envisions
a future in which domain name registrars would be required to subject their domain name policies to
"independent review", and the policies would have to "be consistent with applicable national laws and
compatible with any available judicial or administrative remedies."

Counsel should inform themselves fully about the differences between NSI proceedings and ACP
proceedings so as to be able to advise clients who are selecting new domain names.

Worrying about getting sued. There are two ways to lose a domain name -- by action of NSI's Fifth
Policy, or by court order in connection with a lawsuit. So far as avoiding getting sued is concerned, the
client can do two things: (1) seek advice of competent trademark counsel regarding whether a name is
free for use, and (2) figure out what it would do if it were sued (e.g. establish a relationship with
competent trademark counsel prior to getting sued).

Dealing with cease-and-desist letters. As mentioned above, the Internet and the FTDA expand
greatly the range of possible writers of cease-and-desist letters. The writer of such a letter may be in
any line of business and may be located anywhere.

Any cease-and-desist letter absolutely must be taken seriously. Possible responsive steps include
writing back to the challenger or, in some cases, suing the challenger for a declaratory judgment that
one is not infringing any rights of the challenger.

One great advantage of a declaratory-judgment action is that you get to choose where the lawsuit will
take place, and a second advantage is that you get to choose when it happens.

Writing back to the challenger can also often be a fruitful approach. Depending on the detailed
circumstances, a response letter may include a review of the many other trademark owners who share
the trademark (i.e. the challenger does not have exclusive use of the mark). It may also include the
following quotation from an important Internet trademark court case:

The Court begins with the observation that "unlike a patent or copyright, a trademark does not
confer on its owner any rights in gross or at large." MDT Corp. v. New York Stock
Exchange, Inc., 858 F. Supp. 1028, 1032 (C.D. Cal. 1994) (citing Traeger v.
Gordon-Allen, Ltd., 71 F.2d 786, 768 (9th Cir. 1934)); see also Anheuser-Busch, Inc. v.
Balducci Publications, 28 F.3d 769, 777 (8th Cir. 1994) (noting that "unlike copyright and
patent owners, trademark owners have no rights in gross"). Therefore, the law does not per se
prohibit the use of trademarks or service marks as domain names. Rather, the law prohibits
only uses that infringe or dilute a trademark or service mark owner's mark. Moreover, innocent
third party users of a trademark or service mark have no duty to police the mark for the benefit
of the mark's owner. MDT, 858 F. Supp. at 1034. Consequently, the mere fact that a person
registered a SKUNK WORKS or a variation thereof as a domain name does not mean that the
person infringed or diluted Lockheed's mark.

(Lockheed Martin Corp. v. NSI, 43 U.S.P.Q.2d 1056 (C.D. Cal. 1997.) A copy of the opinion is
available at &lt;http://www.patents.com/skunk/mar19.sht#II&gt;.

See also Interstellar Starship Services, Ltd. v. Epix, Inc. (97-cv-107-FR, D. Ore., November 20,
1997), a copy of which is available at &lt;http://www.bna.com/e-law/cases/epix.html&gt;. The domain
name was epix.com and a trademark challenger owned a registration for "Epix". The Court noted that
promoting a theater group (the domain name owner's activity) is not the same thing as selling electronic
circuit boards and software (the challenger's business), and ruled that the domain name owner wasn't
doing anything wrong.

Worrying about 30-day cutoff letters from NSI. One of the most frightening and disruptive things
that can happen to your client's business is to receive what is called a "30-day letter" from NSI. In such
a letter, your client learns for the first time that NSI conducted a secret proceeding in which it decided
that your client's domain name will be cut off. In this proceeding, of course, your client was not
permitted to tell its side of the story, as would be the case if the proceeding had taken place in a normal
court. Instead, judgment has already taken place and NSI has chosen to side with someone else in
determining to cut off your client's domain name.

Under its previous three Policies, NSI's pro-trademark-owner bias had two general limitations:

- the most NSI would do for a trademark owner was cut off a domain name, not transfer it to
the challenger.

- NSI would do the cutoff only if an "identical" trademark registration were presented and other
formal requirements complied with.

Thus, the dreaded "thirty-day letter" which a domain name owner might receive would come only after
presentation of an "identical" trademark, and the thirty-day letter merely said the domain name would
be placed "on hold", that is, available to no one.

Under its new Fifth Policy, however, NSI has now essentially given itself over entirely to trademark
owners, and does not limit its pro-trademark-owner bias to that reflected in its challenge procedure.
Under its Fifth Policy, Network Solutions states that it "shall have the right in its sole discretion to
revoke, suspend, transfer or otherwise modify a domain name registration upon thirty (30) calendar
days prior written notice." Thus, a new type of dreaded "thirty-day letter" may now arrive -- a letter in
which no justification at all is provided (not even presentation of a trademark registration, merely the
exercise by NSI of "its sole discretion"), and in which the action NSI will take in 30 days is not merely
placing the domain name "on hold", but rather the transfer of the domain name to someone else,
perhaps someone whose identify is not disclosed by NSI in the letter.

If your client receives such a letter, time is of the essence. You must very quickly determine whether to
sue NSI and ask the court to order NSI not to carry out its threat. Alternatively, you may find that suing
the challenger makes sense (in the case of an "NSI's sole discretion" 30-day letter, of course, you may
not know the identity of the challenger). Finally, you may find that it is wise to sue both NSI and the
challenger. For a listing of many cases in which domain name owners have sued NSI to keep from
losing their domain names, see &lt;http://www.patents.com/nsi.sht&gt;.

Recommended reading:

Analysis And Recommendations Regarding NSI Domain Name Policy, at
&lt;http://www.patents.com/nsi/iip.sht&gt;

How is a Domain Name like a Cow?, at &lt;http://www.patents.com/pubs/jmls.sht&gt;.

How can domain name disputes be creatively solved?

In many cases the party coveting someone else's domain name ought to think about the underlying
reasons for wanting the domain name. Is the real problem simply a fear that potential customers will be
lost because someone else owns the domain name? If so, then perhaps matters can be resolved simply
by setting up cross-links. For example, imagine how many companies have the three initials "DISC". 
One of them registered the domain name "DISC.COM", another of them asked NSI to cut off the
domain name. NSI complied, and the domain name owner sued NSI for an injunction blocking NSI's
cutoff of the domain name. The case eventually settled with the creation of a single web page having
links to the web pages of the many companies with the initials "DISC". Were it not for NSI's
willingness to disregard trademark law and to take sides in the matter in its grant of preliminary
injunctive relief (which caused the challenger to perceive that it had higher negotiating power than it
would have had in a conventional court action) the settlement would probably have been arrived at
sooner.

How can trademark owners police their rights regarding domain names and other Internet
activity?

Your client's failure to police the marketplace for infringement of its patents or copyrights generally only
loses its right to obtain remedies from the particular infringers that the client failed to detect. And in any
event, patents and copyrights eventually expire and lack of enforcement eventually means nothing.

In contrast, your clients' failure to police the marketplace for infringement of their trademarks can result
in complete loss of trademark rights, and these are rights that could otherwise have remained in force
benefitting your client's business in perpetuity.

Historically it might have been sufficient to police only in particular geographic market areas, and only in
particular areas of goods or services. Now, because of the Federal Trademark Dilution Act, your client
needs to consider whether to police all possible goods and services. And, because of the Internet, your
client needs to consider whether to police the entirety of the Internet. This essentially means pursuing
trademark rights worldwide.

How do you police your client's trademark rights now that the Internet is in the picture?

Searching existing domain names. If you have not already done so, search all existing domain names
to see whether any of your client's present names (company name, product names, service names) turns
up. Investigate each one to see what use the domain name owner has made or is likely to make of the
domain name. If the domain name isn't actually being used, place a watch on it so that any use that
harms your client may be detected as soon as possible.

Monitoring newly registered domain names (especially the seven new top-level domains). It is
likely that new top-level domain names (FIRM, ARTS, etc.) will come into existence within a year. It is
prudent to monitor domain name registrations in those domains, especially if any of your client's
trademarks are unique and/or coined names. In addition, your client may wish to consider obtaining
protective registrations for domain names in those top-level domains corresponding to your client's
trademarks.

Under Magaziner's new Green Paper on Internet governance, newly registered domain names would
be subject to a 30-day opposition period. Trademark owners must diligently monitor such new
registrations and file timely oppositions, because failure to do so may make it more difficult to obtain
preliminary injunctive relief later.

The Green Paper also calls for the creation of versatile and comprehensive search engines for domain
names, including newly registered domain names. (Thomson &amp; Thomson already provides a very good
search engine in Saegis.)

Watching Internet activity generally (not just domain names). It is all too easy, when the
newspapers are filled with accounts of fights over domain names, to forget that there are many, many
ways in which someone could infringe your trademark rights by means of something other than a
domain name. For example, see below the discussion of meta-tag infringement.

Worrying about declaratory judgment lawsuits. Your policing activity may uncover activities of
others that appear to infringe your client's trademark rights. It is a mistake, however, to fire off a
cease-and-desist letter without due consideration. After all, a cease-and-desist letter may prompt the
recipient to sue your client for a declaratory judgment holding that they are not, in fact, infringing any of
your client's legal rights. Being sued in this way forces your client to defend itself in a distant forum, or
face the risk of losing any claim against the recipient.

Remedies and forums. A trademark owner seeking remedies against a domain name owner has two
general options: normal court, and NSI's "court". NSI's procedures have the advantage of being
inexpensive (the postage cost of two letters) and quick (30 days). You should consider not only the
use of NSI's challenge procedure but also the new "NSI's sole discretion" policy, since under the latter
you may obtain transfer of the domain name, whereas under the challenge procedure you only get the
domain name placed "on hold" forever. Note also the Juno case in which the court ruled that the
challenger was free from any risk of liability for having used the NSI challenge procedure. Keep in
mind, however, that under NSI's Fifth Policy your challenge letter must "clearly allege the factual and
legal bases for the belief" that your rights are being infringed. Also note that under NSI's Fifth Policy
you can't use a design&nbsp;mark to get a domain name cut off.

Once the domain name is "on hold", what then? Well, under NSI's Fifth Policy, if the domain name
owner eventually tires of paying the annual fees, you can get the domain name from NSI.

Keeping the issue in context: understanding how people find web sites

The designers of the Internet never intended that the domain name system would be a way of finding
companies or web sites. In particular, they never intended that domain names be "guessable", except in
the special case of coined and unique names such as Exxon and Kodak.

Despite this, it is commonplace for many people, generally newcomers to the Internet, to try to find a
company or Web site by simply adding "com" to the company's name and typing the resulting guess
into their Web browser. Sometimes this succeeds, generally in the case of coined, unique names. But
generally, in 1997, it fails. For example, if you are looking for the Brown Shoe Company, it is extremely
unlikely that you will find its web site by plugging in "www.brown.com" into your Web browser, for the
simple reason that there are thousands of companies called Brown. (In fact, you would reach the Ted
R. Brown Insurance Agency in Lexington, Kentucky.)

A newcomer to the Internet soon learns, however, that guessing is a waste of time, or, more precisely,
that one should not give up after guessing fails. Instead, one should proceed to the use of online
directories (e.g. Whois), and search engines such as Altavista, Lycos, and the like.

For example, searching "Brown Shoe" in Whois yields the information that the Brown Show Company
of Canada owns the domain name BROWNSHOECO.COM. (Further efforts reveal, however, that
while the Brown Shoe Company of Canada does own that domain name, it has not gotten around to
setting up a web site at that domain name.) Searching "Brown Shoe" in Altavista leads to a number of
Web sites that mention a company by that name, but none that appear to be operated by a company
with that name.

The main point to be made here is that any company selecting a new domain name needs to be aware
that potential visitors to the company's Web site are likely to be increasingly knowledgeable about
search engines and other ways of finding domain names. As a consequence, one should not despair
even if one's first-choice domain name is already taken by someone else. (In the special case where the
desired domain name corresponds to a unique or coined name, one should investigate the bona fides of
the domain name owner and consider asking that the domain name owner hand over the domain name.
See generally &lt;http://www.patents.com/pubs/jmls.sht&gt;.)

The Prince case. Typical of recent disputes is the Prince case. A company in England that does
computer consulting and training, called Prince, had been using the domain name prince.com for several
years. The Prince sporting goods company in the US decided it wanted the domain name, and wrote to
the domain name owner accusing it of trademark infringement.

The domain name owner invoked a provision of the British trademark law that allows relief against
groundless cease-and-desist letters. The sporting goods company ended up with mud on its face; the
court directed Prince not to write any more cease-and-desist letters.

The outcome was, of course, tied to the specific language of the trademark law in Great Britain.

What's next?

Will the new top-level domains solve trademark problems? As mentioned above, it is expected that
within a year, there will be at least one new top-level domain such as FIRM or ARTS. (See generally
the Magaziner Green Paper and the gTLD-MOU site at &lt;http://www.gtld-mou.org/docs/faq.html&gt;.) 
My personal view is that this will not diminish the frequency of fights over COM domain names, and
will do little more than add to the areas in which disputes will arise. It will surely add to the burdens on
those who feel compelled to police the marketplace for possible trademark infringements.

Meta-tags. A search engine such as Altavista visits Web sites one by one, making note of the words
found on the Web sites. The resulting database (called a concordance) is used to serve search engine
users in their quest for Web sites containing particular words. The visits that are used to compile the
concordance are called "robot" or "spider" visits. On our web site at &lt;http://www.patents.com&gt;, we
get an average of about five such robot visits per day.

A new kind of unfair competition has developed in which the operator of a Web site will try to trick the
search engines into sending more visitors to the Web site. An early tactic was to devote a region at the
bottom of a Web page to have a background of a particular color, and to contain text that is specified
to be that same color. The result, to the eye of the visitor, is a featureless region. For the search engine
robot, however, the text is perfectly "visible" and is inserted into the concordance. Humorous and
probably true stories have been told of Web site operators who would conceal the word "sex"
hundreds of times in a Web page, and who would then find that the daily count of visitors would go up
by a factor of ten ore more, presumably because some people go to search engines such as Altavista
and type in such words. If the visible portion of the web page has nothing to do with sex, then perhaps
the chief result is simply some mischief and perhaps some disappointment on the part of the visitor.

The Web continues to evolve, and now there are new ways to conceal text in Web pages. For
example, the Web site operator can use what are called "meta tags" to signal to the search engine
robots that particular words should be placed in the concordance. A well- intentioned Web site
operator can use meta tags to benefit the users of search engines by providing search terms in addition
to the terms contained in the visible text of the Web page.

But suppose the Web site operator draws upon someone else's reputation or goodwill to draw in
visitors? Suppose, for example, that the Ford Motor Company were to hide words such as "Chrysler"
and "General Motors" in meta tags on its web site. The result would be to trade on the name
recognition of the other companies.

A real-life example of this can be seen at &lt;http://www.patents.com/ac&gt;, which describes a lawsuit
brought by our law firm against the operators of some Web pages that contained "Oppedahl" and
"Larson" eight times each. it is difficult to see how such hidden text could get into the Web pages by
accident, and it is likewise difficult to imagine an innocent explanation for such conduct. We discovered
this conduct, involving our firm name hidden in meta tags, by searching for "Oppedahl" in Altavista.

Action item: set up a regular program of Web searches for possible infringements of your
clients' names and trademarks.

The future of the Internet, and the future of the World Wide Web

It is doubtful that any of us could have predicted, six years ago, how important the Internet would turn
out to be. Four years ago, few of us could have predicted how important the World Wide Web would
turn out to be. Even after the Web had existed for over a year, few could have predicted that search
engines such as Altavista would later develop that would completely transform the way people find
things within the Web. Pundits have taken to talking about "web years" the way pet owners speak of
"dog years", to attempt to convey the rapid pace of change on the Internet.

For example, in 1994 when our firm was making its initial plans for an Internet presence, there was a
period of time when it seemed to us that we would probably set up a Gopher site, not a Web site. Now
in 1997 no one bothers to visit Gopher sites any more. And no one bothers to set up new Gopher sites.
It never crosses anyone's mind that a new Internet presence would be anything other than a Web site.

If three years is enough for an entire category of Internet sites (Gopher sites) to fall out of fashion and
be supplanted by Web sites, who can begin to guess what will be important three years from now?

This page is &lt;http://www.patents.com/pubs/abaipl.sht&gt;. Revised February 8, 1998. 
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