A question on my CPSC430 midterm mentioned Microsoft suing a 17-year old by the name of Mike Rowe for owning the domain mikerowesoft.com. The story is pretty interesting for me because this guy lives relatively near me in Victoria, seems to be either 2 or 3 years older than me and was a web designer. In 2004 I was in grade 10 and was doing a web design mentor-ship type project with the web maintainer of my local library, and I owned my first domain then too. Luckily my domain name then was some quasi-poetic thing that only a teenage girl would come up with and could not have in any shape or form be associated with a software giant!
Mike Rowe though, his funny domain name was phonetically similar to Microsoft, who sent legal papers to him and then ordering that he hand his domain name over to them…and when he refused, Microsoft offered him $10! Well at least they had the decency to not offer him $9.98, the price to register a new .com (at NameCheap at least)? Mike then asked for $10K but settled out of court for an Xbox, a trip to Redmond, and Microsoft certification training.
Well, I’m glad the story had a somewhat happy ending. But an Xbox – really?! And I seem to remember reading on Engadget about really young kids (10? 13? I don’t remember exactly) passing MS certification tests, so I don’t know how good those are…sure, those must have been some smart young kids but still. And I understand that Microsoft works hard to keep their brand unique, and to not have their trademark diluted. But seriously, who is going to confuse mikerowesoft with Microsoft? Goes to show that companies are serious about their trademark, I guess! But sometimes it confuses me that there hasn’t been a lawsuit. For example apple computer and MAC cosmetics. Everyone calls apple computers “Mac”s and everyone pronounces MAC “Mac” as well (technically it’s M.A.C). It’s true that they’re in completely different fields but it’s still the exact phonetically! Who’s going to get confused between computers and make up? ME! When I first started getting into cosmetics I was confused by MAC, I was like “aren’t they a computer company?” This is probably because I was a geek way before turning into a girly-girl. But I can’t be the only one!