Giant Corporation againt little guy

[Limeoutsider]

A 17-year-old teen from British Columbia named Mike Rowe registered the domain name mikerowesoft.com for his web design company and now software giant Microsoft is after him. "I thought it would be funny to add 'soft' to the end of (my name)," said Rowe, but Microsoft isn't laughing. They are demanding that Rowe give up his domain name and initially offered him $10 when he asked for compensation.(cheap bastards) When he asked for $10,000 for the worth of his business, Microsoft sent him a 25-page letter accusing him of trying to force them into giving him a large settlement. Oh yea, they cat afford that, even though they overcharge for crappy service.


Which side are you taking

 

[drew70]

I find it silly that Microsoft would care in the slightest, given the radically different spelling. Makes me consider registering my own renditions...

my-crow-soft
mayekroezoft
michreausoft
microsloth

 

[milagros317]

Didn't you know that Bill Gates is the devil incarnate?

 

[giantfan121262]

What a pompous asshole. $10,000 is a spit in the bucket to Gates.

 

[Ticklish9's]

I wouldn't take a settlement at all, unless it was RIDICULOUSLY large.

I mean really... it's funny, I'd be within my rights (it's the guys NAME, for goodness sakes), and hell, if they want it that bad, they can buy it dear. It's not like he's milking money out of the poor house.

 

[qjakal]

Devils Advocate...

Just to play fair, let's look at it from the other side for a moment. Assuming they should bother with suits like this at all, which is an internal policy decision (obviously an aggressive one), they don't want to settle for large dollars. Should they do so, they would be inundated by copycat suits, such as Drew outlined. It would become a cottage industry as people spent time and effort to work up variations hoping to cash in...

I'd have offered to buy him a new domain name and go from there. They'd be better off spending that 10K on legal costs to deter others from following in this gents footsteps...

Q

 

[Knox The Hatter]

Shakespeare was right.

 

[sushi854]

As I understand it, shouldn't he be able to register any domain name he wants as long as he's not trying to profit from the microsoft name? I don't think there's much Microsoft can do except deal with it or buy it from him.

 

[Limeoutsider]

I think he should take Microsoft to court, and if he loses, sue the court for telling him he cant use his own name

 

[The Pianist]

Actually theres also a similary nasty thing happening here in Australia. You know the craze of the Ugh Boot that seems to be taking over the world at the moment... they are like gumboots made out of sheep skin. Well, they've been around in Australia for almost a century now... quite a few companies make them down here... and for the large part of last centuary, most people just thought they were odd australian shoes...

Unfortunately now they've become popular, an American company has suddenly had the great idea of copyrighting the word "Ugh" and is now going around Australian companies telling them that they now cannot make the Ugh boots that they have been making for the last 80 - 90 years and the like.

Now, the Ugh boot has been a part of Australian culture for ages... so does this means that pretty much any word can be copyrighted if its connected to a product? I've been thinking of making a little ball I'm gonna call the "The" ball... I reakon I could make more money outta the copy right than the product itself...

Damn American Corporations.

 

[Haltickling]

Why not go one step further and copyright every single letter? Imagine the bucks flowing in from the letter "U", for example...

Although German law is more restricitve as to which lawsuits are allowed, there's a whole army of patent lawyers earning their living with hairsplitting over product names. I used to job as a typist with one of them, and you wouldn't believe how many pages you can waste on arguing about every single syllable!

But the funniest lawsuit I've heard of was McDonalds vs. an animal food producer. They sold their cat food under McCat, and their dog food under McDog. McDonald's argument against that: If McCat is cat food, and McDog is dog food, McDonald's own McChicken could be mistaken for chicken food... 😛 😛 😛