Google's lawyers are as bad as the rest

Message boards : Politics : Google's lawyers are as bad as the rest
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Message 960648 - Posted: 3 Jan 2010, 18:48:50 UTC

From ArsTechnica.com:

The National Arbitration Forum is certified by ICANN to decide domain disputes; when Google wins, the domain at issue is transferred to the company's control. One side effect of this policy is that, whenever Google decides to truly index all of the world's information, the "sexogoogle.com" domain name is already in the company's control.

Google last lost a dispute back in 2004 when it went after a man named Richard Wolfe for froogles.com. In that case, Wolfe had registered froogles.com back in 2000 and had set up a "frugal" shopping site there that earned commissions from the 700 retailers linked to on the site's 400 product pages.

Wolfe told the arbiters that he had chosen the site because the actual word "frugal" was not available and because froogles.com "has a nice 'ring' to it, and because the 's' on the end of the word reminds him of well-known department stores."

When Google (later) launched its froogle.com shopping engine and filed for a trademark on the term in 2003, Wolfe filed a Notice of Opposition on the grounds that he was already using the froogles.com term. During arbitration, Wolfe said that Google's legal team was shaking him down.

"Google’s filing of its Complaint in this action is an apparent effort to coerce Mr. Wolfe into withdrawing his opposition to Google’s application in the PTO," said the decision. "Indeed, in an e-mail dated May 11, 2004, Google's counsel represented that if Mr. Wolfe would withdraw his opposition to Google’s application to register its mark FROOGLE, then Google would not object to Mr. Wolfe continuing to operate his website at <froogles.com>. Google made it quite clear in its e-mail that if Mr. Wolfe refused, Google would initiate proceedings to have his domain name taken from him and transferred to Google."

When Wolfe refused to withdraw his opposition, Google tried to seize the froogles.com domain name on the grounds that it was too close to "Google."

In a split decision, the arbitration panel sided with Wolfe, noting that he was running an actual business at the site, that the site had bern around for four years already, and that "the dissimilar letters in the domain name are sufficiently different to make it distinguishable from Complainant’s mark because the domain name creates an entirely new word and conveys an entirely singular meaning from the mark."
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Message 960747 - Posted: 5 Jan 2010, 1:52:08 UTC - in response to Message 960648.  

Google's lawyers are as bad as the rest

Then you must not know that the goal of a lawyer is to WIN for their client any legal dispute with all the necessary zeal to do so. To do otherwise would make them a BAD lawyer; and possibly unemployed. If Google's legal team hasn't lost since 2004 I'd say they have excellent lawyers.
me@rescam.org
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Message 960748 - Posted: 5 Jan 2010, 1:53:48 UTC - in response to Message 960648.  

Shocking, Google's lawyers behaved like, umm, lawyers. Interestingly the article notes that Google has won 62 out of 64 ICANN domain disputes, which might suggest either that ICANN is heavily biased in Google's favor, or that Google does not dispute domain names frivolously.
I think you'll find it's a bit more complicated than that ...

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Message 960752 - Posted: 5 Jan 2010, 1:58:37 UTC
Last modified: 5 Jan 2010, 1:59:00 UTC

This does indeed remind me of the case Microsoft vs. MikeRoweSoft in 2004 - over the website of MikeRoweSoft.com.

Since my name is Mike Rowe, I thought it would be funny to add 'soft' to the end of it.
– Mike Rowe


Link to the Wikipedia article.

Apparently, it was settled out of court where Mike Rowe granted ownership of the domain to Microsoft in exchange for gifts and training.
- Luke.
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Message boards : Politics : Google's lawyers are as bad as the rest


 
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