by Zachary Coile
Staff Writer, The Examiner
May 13, 1997
This article originally appeared on page D1.
Farallon Communications moved fast to register the name "Netopia" for the Alameda firm's Internet software.
In hindsight, they were lucky to get the trademark before any of their competitors did.
"We're certainly glad we've had it," said Farallon's president and CEO, Allan Lefkof, whose firm registered the name a year and a half ago. "Now we're using it for our hardware and our software."
Much to the chagrin of some emerging companies, product and company names formed with the words "net," "web," "power," "link" and "cyber" are being devoured by the nation's high-tech companies, according to a new report by a Berkeley corporate and product naming and branding firm.
The report, by Master-McNeil Inc., found that while overall applications for trademarks have grown steadily, filings in the area of technology namings have exploded, jumping more than 186 percent between 1989 and 1996. During the same period, applications using those five tech words have grown more than 500 percent.
The most popular word of those surveyed by the firm was "net," which appeared in 1,036 filings in 1990. In 1996, it made its way into 5,107 filings.
"The number of names made up of a small number of word-parts has just risen so rapidly in the last few years," said S.B. Master, president of Master-McNeil. "Words like net, web, and cyber are everywhere."
Laurel Sutton, an administrator at Master-McNeil who conducted the study of U.S. Patent and Trademark Office figures, said companies are starting to be turned off by the glut of similar names.
"People are seeing that the market is getting saturated," Sutton said. "Now it's boring to be called Web-something or cyber-something. Five years ago it wasn't."
Trademark attorney Beth Parker of McCutchen Doyle in San Francisco said the rising tide of high-tech trademark filings has overwhelmed the government's ability to register new names.
"The U.S. Patent and Trademark office's understanding has lagged far behind the technology," Parker said.
As a result, the government has allowed some companies to register such words as "Web" and "Internet" - which has delayed the applications of any company hoping to use those generic words for their products and services.
Internet territory has a lot to do with the high-tech name game. Over the years, the fight over domain names on the World Wide Web has overshadowed the fight for trademark names. The domain of an Internet address most commonly comes at the end of the URL (universal resource locator) and serves to identify the nature of the content providers. The ".com" (pronounced "dot-com" ) suffix has proven most common - and popular - although others are available.
The current system of domain names, dating back to 1984, is controlled by one corporation, the Virginia-based Network Solutions Inc., or NSI, under contract with the U.S. National Science Foundation. Worldwide domain name registration is so brisk that Network Solutions could collect $100 million in registration fees in 1997 alone.
