CircleID

I was sitting around on a Sunday afternoon catching up with a backlog of work watching the Philadelphia Eagles beat the New York Giants in an unbelievable comeback, when I visited the ICANN website and noticed the new logo for the upcoming 40th ICANN regional. This is the meeting which ICANN is hosting next March in San Francisco. The reason this new logo caught my attention was I personally thought the original choice of the San Francisco logo looked confusingly similar to Cisco's registered trademark. It would be interesting to learn if ICANN's decision to change the logo was made in response to trademark concerns raised internally by ICANN, a response to an inquiry from Cisco's legal counsel, or some other business decision? If ICANN made this change as a result of trademark concerns, there would be a certain element of irony considering that ICANN had recently determined the overarching issue of trademark protection closed.

By Michael D. Palage, Intellectual Property Attorney and IT Consultant

Related topics: Domain Names, ICANN, Law, Top-Level Domains