] Here's some notes from the recent Nomimet AGM in the UK:
 ...
] >Nominet lost its insurance.  Its insurer refused to renew because of the
] >risk of Nominet being brought into trademark suits (they have been named
] >in one so far -- the Pitman case).  They are in the process of negotiating
] >an agreement for L10M insurance, at an annual premium of over L100,000

Geoff Huston wrote:
 
] The last para I found particularly interesting.

Having read the "Pitman.co.uk Judgment" (http://www.nic.uk/judgment.html)
I would suggest that this case is rather unusual.  It stems from the fact
that on 1996-02-21, pitman.co.uk was registered for Pitman Publishing,
and on 1996-03-15 pitman.co.uk was also registered to a totally different
company for Pitman Training.

If I was the insurer for an organisation responsible for DNS registrations
(like Nominet) which allowed registration of a single FQDN to two quite
independent companies, I would be rather concerned about insuring that
organisation also.

I note that Nominet did not have formal legal representation at this case
(although they were named as the first defendant), and there is no sign
they were forced to incur legal costs as a result of the case -- but
they probably decided voluntarily to consult a legal practitioner.
__________________________________________________________________________
David Keegel <djk&#167;cyber.com.au>  http://www.cyber.com.au/  +61 3 9642-5997
Cybersource P/L: Unix Systems Administration and TCP/IP network management