Google: That's my layout, now hand over your domain Mister! | The Coffeehouse

"The takedown notice was rather curious in its use of American law, given that the site is at a Belgian web address, but it appears as though the server itself is hosted in Houston, Texas. [...] They insist not only that the parody stop, but that the domain be transferred to Google. See, it's all fun and games until you make a parody of a Google site.

If Microsoft did this, half of the planet would explode. Don't be evil, mm'kay!"

Google puts the hammer down on Google parodies

jamie

ms did do this already to mike rowe soft .com

this was a guys name - not even a parady - and it looked nothing like ms.com

these google sites - have ripped off the look, layout, branding , colours and even bevels - to capitalise on Google brand - parody or not - could be confusing to users ( thinking the site is somehow accociated with google)

so - my answer is:

google sites shut down: not evil
microsoft site shut down: evil

jonathanh

Somehow I doubt that the Belgian guys will get Google's equivalent of the tour of the Microsoft campus, MSDN subscription, free training courses, free xBox, yadda yadda yadda that Mike Rowe got...

MisterDonut

In a project on search engines, one that was found was actually booble dot com. (I refuse hyperlinking to it..). It was, as you can imagine, an adult search engine, ripped off 100% from Google and classified themselves as a Parody.

Interesting, isn't it? Imitation is the most sincere form of flattery?

BTW, the project was not mine, before you ask.. Smiley

Jaz

to be honest i don't think mike rowe deserved any of the stuff he got

jamie

jonathanh wrote:

Somehow I doubt that the Belgian guys will get Google's equivalent of the tour of the Microsoft campus, MSDN subscription, free training courses, free xBox, yadda yadda yadda that Mike Rowe got...

all that happened after the fact to save MS face - as the story was everywhere - if you remember - before those concessions were offered

Sven Groot

Jaz wrote:

to be honest i don't think mike rowe deserved any of the stuff he got

I think Mike Rowe deserved to keep his domain name.

That was clearly a case of a couple of lawyers who had too much caffeine and too little to do.

Cider

jamie wrote:

jonathanh wrote:
Somehow I doubt that the Belgian guys will get Google's equivalent of the tour of the Microsoft campus, MSDN subscription, free training courses, free xBox, yadda yadda yadda that Mike Rowe got...

all that happened after the fact to save MS face - as the story was everywhere - if you remember - before those concessions were offered

Mike Rowe deserved nothing. He deliberately got that domain because it would sound like Microsoft.com, then attempted to sell that domain to Microsoft for $10,000 and then, when he didn't get that, went to the press to try and bloody Microsoft's nose. The only thing the kid deserved was a good hard slap.

jamie

He deliberately got that domain because it would sound like Microsoft.com,

true - as it was his name! = fun/cool - non-malicious
it was also spelled differently

then attempted to sell that domain to Microsoft for $10,000

AFTER the lawyers said to surrender domain that he had a site on that would need to be re-done - plus cards and letterhead etc

and then, when he didn't get that, went to the press to try and bloody Microsoft's nose.

nope - the press themselves picked up on this david goliath story and ran it everywhere - hence the "free gifts" and backpeddling over suing a microsft developer no less

harumscarum

*runs to register m-eyecrowsoft.com*

Keskos

Cider wrote:

jamie wrote:

jonathanh wrote:
Somehow I doubt that the Belgian guys will get Google's equivalent of the tour of the Microsoft campus, MSDN subscription, free training courses, free xBox, yadda yadda yadda that Mike Rowe got...

all that happened after the fact to save MS face - as the story was everywhere - if you remember - before those concessions were offered

Mike Rowe deserved nothing. He deliberately got that domain because it would sound like Microsoft.com, then attempted to sell that domain to Microsoft for $10,000 and then, when he didn't get that, went to the press to try and bloody Microsoft's nose. The only thing the kid deserved was a good hard slap.

Agreed. He is just too smart to know what's going on. Only Microsoft bashers found the kid right.

Btw, jamie, the guy did contacted with the press and released the documents. The press didn't go and ask him if someone contacted him.

jamie

"Only Microsoft bashers found the kid right. "

i like ms but thought them wrong in this case

"Btw, jamie, the guy did contacted with the press and released the documents."

it was after the fact (lawyers) = self defence

and he didnt go to the press - he posted and photographed the MS lawyer stuff and put it on HIS site - and asked what he should do

jamie

because he already had created a website business cards etc which all needed replacing

i followed this when it happened.. even his bloggings on his site

he was polite and cordial throughout
thanking everyone for the support - and even explaining himself continually in regards to " squatting / extortion" alegations

i think most thought he was being stright up and ms was overreacting - hence the presents from ms much later

lars

jamie wrote:

ms did do this already to mike rowe soft .com
this was a guys name - not even a parady -

Those that can't tell the difference between "Microsoft.com" and "Mikerowesoft.com" should be sent back to school to brush up on their reading and typing fundamentals.

jamie wrote:
and it looked nothing like ms.com

Then my opinion is that Microsoft should have left the kid alone. After the fact, they did what was right and cut the kid some slack. Kudos to Microsoft. I doubt if Google will do the same.

jamie wrote:

these google sites - have ripped off the look, layout, branding , colours and even bevels - to capitalise on Google brand - parody or not - could be confusing to users ( thinking the site is somehow accociated with google)

If it could easily be mistaken for Google, I think Google have the right to ask that the site owner to change the site make the difference clear. But I don't think that Google have the excusive right to that "look and feel". People have tried that already with GUIs. In any case, Google should keep their grabby little hands of the domain name. If they want every domain that is a misspelling of Google they should go ahead and fork up the money to register it themselves in the first place.

jamie

what would have been interesting is if the kids name was

Mike Rosoft

and he registered - his name - mikerosoft.com

just as i have jamiegrant.com

what would win?

your name or a corp?

how much to sell your name?

so if MS was theoretically called Jameegrant Inc
and i registered jamiegrant - before they did
it should be my domain

Jaz

lars wrote:

Those that can't tell the difference between "Microsoft.com" and "Mikerowesoft.com" should be sent back to school to brush up on their reading and typing fundamentals.

Right whatever thats a poor arguement, a corporation has to protect their identity, if you set up wall mart, wal mart will have a go at you because it's very similar to their trademark. Last time i checked Mike Rowe was called exactly that, not Mike RoweSoft, he knew exactly what he was doing.

And if i believe correctly he made websites, not software. He deserved nothing from MS. He should not have tried to sell the domain to MS.

Manip

In my opinion Microsoft never had a case anyway. 'soft' is a general term ie 'software'.

Microsoft wasn't even the first to use 'soft' in their company name.

If I received the letter I would have just binned it and let them take me to court.

edit: corrected for incorrect information (dam you google!)

lars

It may sound the same. Still the browser don't care. It is not like you would end up on the wrong one because you made a typo. Unless you're really really drunk. Smiley

About selling the domain, did he approach Microsoft wanting to sell it? Or did Microsoft come to him demanding that he hand it over? If I had a web site that I'd put serious work into I wouldn't happily hand over the keys just for the registrar fee either. I would want an XBOX too. Smiley

Manip

MikeRoweSoft.com

In a nutshell, 17 year old highschool student Mike Rowe, a budding web designer, registered a domain to promote his works and to be his personal domain. He found that MikeRoweSoft.com was available and registered it. A few months later he got a legal nastygram from Microsofts lawyers saying that he was infringing on Microsofts intellectual property and that he should give them the domain to avoid any legal troubles. After a phone call to the lawyers they offered him his registration fee of $10 as compensation. His response was standard for a 17 year old who thought that his site and time were worth significantly more and asked for $10,000. This is what the lawyers wanted.

Under WIPO (World Intellectual Property Orginization, the final court of decision for domain disputes) rules, if you register a domain in 'bad faith' i.e. to try and extort money from someone who has a vesed interest in the name, you can have the domain taken away from you and get no compensation. The Lawers for MS tricked Mike into establishing bad faith so that if they went through the whole WIPO process they could sieze the domain outright and Mike would'nt get one red cent.

Microsoft has since been getting alot of bad press over attackign a 17 year old and seems to have backed away from thier demands of him to hand over the domain

Microsoft has every right to defend thier intellectual property. However, this case shows thier utter level of stupidity and blind faith in thier lawyers who, in my opinion are the only winners in this whole thing becasue they get to rob Microsoft blind

Here's Why:
Microsoft presumably has a team of lawyers dedicated to enforcing thier intellectual property claims. These lawyers spend thier days following reports of people mis-using thier name, logo's, etc. Mike Rowe came onto thier radar screen and some lawyer saw a gold mine.

Lawyer bills Microsoft to send out the first nastygram.

Lawyer bills Microsoft more money when kid calls. Lawyer makes offer of $10 to buy the domain in order to get kid to make dumb mistake of asking for more and establishing 'bad faith' registration.

Microsoft can then use bad faith as 'Evidence' to sieze domain through WIPO (after going through judgement process) without having to pay $10 to the kid.

After lengthy judgement process, Microsoft can get domain for free and not pay kid the original $10.

Meanwhile lawyer has sent his 3 kids through university with how much he's billed Microsoft to file all the WIPO paperwork, arbiter bribing, etc.

If Microsoft sat down and thought about possible infringing domain names and registered them themselves, this whole issue would have cost them $10, not the presumably thousands they are paying in laywer fees and bad publicity

Several years ago, when GTE atlantic changed thier name to Verizon, they went on a spending spree and registered every verizon.com varient they could think of, including anything that might be used as protest sitest (verizonsucks.com, etc). 2600 derailed thier efforts, but the effort was made on verizons part to take the easy route and register obviously infringing domains.

Microsoft does'nt seem to have any idea what thier legal department is doing. Microsoftcorporation.com is registered to a company that is clearly not the Microsoft Corp. However, there seems to be no legal action proceeding thier, the site is registered in Russia. I think the lawyers realized It's easier to drag a 17 year old who registered his domain to his home address, infront of WIPO and get a friendly judgment to justify thier expenses, rather than some anonymous Russian who is alot harder to track down.

In an effort to test the actions of Microsoft's Legal department to see if they would ever think to just register variations of mikerowesoft.com to save themselves some trouble, I went on a hunt. I'm now the registered owner of Mike-RoweSoft.com.

If I get a nastygram in the mail, I'll fold faster than superman on laundry day. I'm just curious to deal with Microsoft's legal department to see how much time/money they waste retrieving a domain that they could have bought themselves in the 2.5 months since they started action against Mike Rowe.

If anything happens, I'll be sure to post it

Update:
Due to media pressure on Microsoft, they settled with Mike Rowe for an Xbox, some games, courses and an invite to Redmond. Amazing how tactics change is'nt it.

1/23/04
RenderMan

lars

LOL. What a wonderful word: "nastygram". I wonder if it is something like the howler in Harry Potter...

eddwo

I think having asked for $10,000 is a bit much, but it was certainly worth more than $10. I didn't know you could get domains registered for that little anyway. His site was a showcase of his web design business, he had about 4 site designs up and a list of a couple of clients. That with site design, telling all his contacts about it, having to waste the business cards and letterheads etc was worth at least $2000.
If he hadn't asked for quite so much they probably wouldn't have been so heavy handed with him. If the lawyer had even visited the site they would have known it was a legitimate domain registration and not just squatting. Offering as reasonable amount for giving up the domain would have made it go away without all the bad publicity for MS.

Anyway Mike ended up doing rather well out of it.

This google thing is silly too. They weren't cashing in on Google's image, they weren't making any money off it and they were forwarding the search queries to google itself. It was just a fun site, like the elgoog one, not doing anyone any harm. Even if Google is well within their rights to force them to take down the google logos and site, I don't see why they should be forced to give up the domain itself.

Alexm

"blind faith in thier lawyers who"

Not being funny but who else are you going to ask for legal advice? Voodoo Chickens? It's not like there's a KB article on Legal action.

I don't see the problem here; the guy knew his domain was an infringement, so it wasn't like a revelation when a cease and desist came through - I like to think a lot of people would say; it's a fair cop and take the tenner (plus maybe some extra expenses - but it's not like the guy spent more than $50 on stationary).

Should MS have spent the time and effort to find it was a kid running the site - maybe, but if somebody did it to me I wouldn't - besides I thought he was running a business off of it when does it start to infringe in that case? It's because of these grey areas that lawyers are so jumpy about setting precedents.

Manip