Phonetics

[puk]

a 17 years old student is beeing sued by M$ just because the domain he registred is phonetic similar to M$.
Story
earlier i was able to access his site www.mikerowesoft.com but not right now;something has happend?!
curious how this will end up

[muno]

The site is accessible.
Though, it might be DDoS'ed by millions of people looking at his site on poor provider

[puk]

i know!!
since yesterday there have been registred:
mikerowesoft.org
mikerowesoft.net
mikerowesoft.us

[vass0922]

sad thing is, now that other people are jumping on the bandwagon and creating all of the other .org,.net domains MS will have more of a lawsuit

however, I think this will set a bad precendent.
If MS wins this, MANY other sites will start suing

Been to whitehouse dot com lately? (DON"T GO) not a pretty site and certainly not something you want to go to at work. However, the point is.. somebody thats HORRIBLE at spelling may for some bizarre reason spell microsoft as mikerowesoft
SO people will start suing for all of these misspelled domains that are out there that other people buy
(heh, I see google was smart, www.gogle.com works too )
Pretty shaky

[Theophylact]

Googol doesn't. And that's the word the founders of Google were thinking of (but misspelled) when they named their search engine...

[Blazer06]

Registrar..: gkg.net (http://register.gkg.net/)
Domain Name: MIKEROWESOFT.COM
Created on..............: 05-AUG-2003
Expires on..............: 05-AUG-2004
Record last updated on..: 14-JAN-2004
Status..................: ACTIVE

hes had if for a while to

i hope M$ gets hit big time for trying this


Blaze

[RayH]

The problem is PHONETICS or homonym. If MS didn't sue, MikeRoweSoft would stand. The kid could then legitimately sell the company (i.e. name). It could cause a lot of confusion in VOICE sales, especially overseas.

"How many copies of MikeRoweSoft Office would you like?" Please deposit the money first!

[Uncle Bob]

Originally posted by puk
a 17 years old student is beeing sued by M$ just because the domain he registred is phonetic similar to M$.
Story
earlier i was able to access his site www.mikerowesoft.com but not right now;something has happend?!
curious how this will end up

I think that the student should file a counter suite for millions plus damages etc. Let the lawyers settle it. they get all the money any way.

[puk]

the show is over:

"Microsoft said yesterday it has settled a dispute with Mike Rowe, a 17-years old Victoria resident over the use of the Internet domain MikeRoweSoft.com, which he was using to sell his services as a Web developer. He has given it up in exchange for an X-Box, a tour of Microsoft's Redmond, Wash. facilities and money to cover expenses."

puk

[puk]

here's a linky http://www.canada.com/victoria/story...7-208917FCC2E4