How much do you think this domain worth?

Not if you use it as a commercial site.

OK interesting point. So now we have http://www.mikerowesoft.com behaving like this, when I thought he already settled his suit?

For reference

I think that's bang out of order.
The domain only sounds like microsoft when spoken, and its the guys real name. He should have a right to use his name in a domain whether is sounds like a copyrighted trademark or not.

The way i see it, if people don't want someone else to use a domain name they should have been quicker off the mark registering it themselves.

This "fair use" thing is too vague to be considered law. And in cases where fair use is an issue they usually seem to side with whoever has the most money.

Really? So if I have 'google' as a trademark, in order to protect the mark I should have to register agoogle.com, bgoogle.com, cgoogle.com, dgoogle.com, egoogle.com, fgoogle.com, ggoogle.com, hgoogle.com, igoogle.com, jgoogle.com, kgoogle.com, lgoogle.com, mgoogle.com, ngoogle.com, ogoogle.com, and so on?

(Continue with aagoogle.com to zzgoogle.com, aaagoogle.com to zzzgoogle.com, agooogle.com to zgooogle.com, a-google.com to zzzzgoogle.com, google-a to google-zzzzzz, and so on.)

That's a combinatorial explosion!

You should have also registered ... http://www.mygoogle.com

this way you could get double the trouble !

Thats exactly what you should do.

I dont see how by registering a trademark they are able to have legal ownership, by default, of all of those domain names.

If you don't want other people to own them, then you buy them.

I understand that registering all of the combinations of domains that contain google is an imppossible task, but that is just tough.

That's funny. Microsoft stated he was infinging their copyright. Ha! Since when were words that sounded like other words copyrightable? They accused him of trying to extort money and there could be some basis for that if his name were not Mike Rowe, but since it is the choice IMO is innocent. And what a bunch of cheapskates to only offer him $10 bucks to compensate him for his trouble. Had they been reasonable they could have spent a whole lot less and avoided the negative publicity! The article didn't say what Mike's recourse was, but I hope he gives them hell! I don't know what age an adult is considered in Canada, but if it's 18 like here in the US his being 17 might be an advantage. Could he sue them for duress? If there is any infringing going on Microsoft is probably violating his rights as a minor. But since I'm not a lawyer I wouldn't know.

SJP

I would love something like that to happen to me.
There is no way microsoft would legally be able to make him give up the domain name, thats why they tried to use thier usual scare tactics and high price lawyers to try and intimidate him into giving up the name, and then acted as if it was HIM being unreasonable when he wouldn't accept thier $10 compensation.

And imagine how many MILLIONS of hits his site has got through this.

There is a guy in the UK that owned the domain name itunes.co.uk , this guy got sued by Apple because they owned the name itunes as a trademark...the only thing is this domain name that he registered was already been made up and registered by him before ipod was invented so at the time he wasn't infringing any copyrights or trademark rights.

Now Apple comes with the itunes hype and they CLAIM this domain from him also threathining him with lawsuits, etc and the guy already made some decent money with other sites (millions) accepted their threat and went to court.

Total outcome... the domain registrar or the responsible authority for the co.uk domains has assigned the name to Apple and stripped the guy from his ownership, and he was already the legal owner of this domain Apple didn't want to pay him the amount the domain is worth and tried to stupe him with some pocket money of a 15 year old for the domain, offcourse this guy accepted the battle, but to no success.

!$#%^^^&%$# Corporations, can you believe it? Those guys have millions, if not billions and still cheap as hell, just like the guy in the Netherlands that owned the domain "lordoftherings.nl" he was offered 10.000 euro's for this, that woman made a obscene amount of money of this whole lord of the rings saga and she doesn't want to give any more money for this. Eventually this guy folded and accepted the 10K, probably naiv to believe their threats where possibly going to cost him money instead of he could get some money for the domain, so he made the choice to sell it.

I would tell her - 1 COOL MILLION! You pay up or leave with nothing!

For reference, I am not a lawyer, trademark or otherwise. What I am posting is mostly common sense stuff.

Trademarks are there to protect a company and allow them, and them alone, to conduct trade (providing goods or services) using a recognizable mark (usually a word, though I think images can be trademarked).

If you use their registered mark (ie the word "google"), you are ingfringing on their exclusive right to do business under that name. The reason this is considered infringement is because a) Potential clients or customers may view you as being the real google, or b) Your use of the name google implies that you are a representative of, connected to or otherwise associated with google. In plain english, using an established trademark "tricks" your users into thinking you are somehow officially related to the "real" trademark owner, when you are not. It causes confusion.

There are times when use of a registered trademark is perfectly legal, without consent from the trademark owner. These include Parody and education, and I *think* legitimate complaints against the trademark holder.

Parody is when you make fun of a trademark or copyright, or it's owners. This can be a touchy subject, and I'm not really familiar with all the ins and outs of what is considered parody, but from what I gather, if it can be viewed as damaging in ANY way to the trademark owner, it's a no-no.

Education. Fair use is granted when you want to teach courses on new or emerging technologies that might be trademarked. For instance, if you are a college, and you want to offer a course on google adsense, it's much easier to say "Google Adsense Course" than it is to say "Course on that advertising program run by that company that has a really great search engine". This is considered fair use.

Again, let me point out that I am not a lawyer, this is not to be considered as legal advice, and if you are in a situation where you may be infringing someone elses trademark, seek the services of a lawyer.

On to the fun stuff.
The internet. What a wonderful place. Not only has it revolutionized communication and information management, it has thrown a wrench into the great machinery of patent, trademark and copyright law.
The internet is global. Anyone from anywhere on earth can view a website from anywhere else on earth.
Before the internet, People had to be within your viewing or advertising radius to even know about you. This allowed small businesses in disparate cities to operate under a name that may or may not have already been trademarked. For instance, In the make believe town of Whatever, Oklahoma, there may have been a store called True Value. They were allowed to continue doing business under that name, not because the "real" True Value Corporation (who owned the trademark) decided to let them use the name, but because their target market was local, and the "real" True Value didn't have an outlet in that town, and thus didn't know of the infringement.

Now introduce the internet. The Whatever, Oklahoma company wants to go global, and sees the internet as the means to an end, so they create a website "truevalue.com" and post their inventory on it.

Now, the True Value Corporation comes along, decided this internet thing is neat, and wants to do business on it, so they try to buy the domain name, only to find it's already been taken. A Battle ensues. The winner? The Trademark holder.
Why? Because they're better at what they do, or provide better service? No, because they have reserved the RIGHT to use that name for doing business.

Now look at the domain atgoogle.com. The domain is being used based on the strength of the "google" trademark. Face it, if the word "google" wasn't well known, you'd have chosen a different domain name.
Now, couple with that the fact that you are NOT doing parody, and you are not providing legitimate education, and you have a solid case of trademark infringement.
Here's the clincher: Don't expect to hear anything from google right away. If I were google, I would wait until your site got popular, and got a decent amount of traffic, and THEN I would file a suit. Let you do the work of gathering the traffic and users. If your site doesn't become popular, it's of no interest to google at all.
This works doubly so for internet based companies. If you are infringing on the rights of an internet based company, and they can double their traffic by taking a domain from you, expect a lawsuit, or at least an ICANN query to strip you of your infringing domain.

In the long run, it's best to avoid domain names that include trademarked words.

I hope this wasn't too confusing, it's almost 2am here and I've been drinking

it wasn't to confusing, i find you made some good points there, only regarding the case of itunes.co.uk i think it's unfair towards the guy that invented the name itunes, yes that's right he was the inventor of the name itunes and then Apple comes along makes a invention called ipod and decides to call the offering of music related to ipod "itunes".

And now they claim something that is originated from the original domain registrants mind and creativity, since the guy owned the domain i think he was under the assumption that he didn't have to place some copyright for it .

I see where you are coming from, and to a point it makes sense.
But in another sense, the owner of the domain should be equally allowed to take ownership of the trademark if he had registered the domain before the tradmark had been registered through infingment of intellectual property rights.

What makes the tradmark owner rule supreme in cases where the domain name had been registered before the trademark?
Should they have registered another trademark instead then?

In my mind the person quickest off the mark should win. If you want a domain, you register it. If you dont register it then its free for someone else to register.

I dont know if ozzu is a registered trademark, but if its not would it be fair for me to register it as a trademark tomorow and claim ownership of this site by default? of course not.

WOW! we have a 2 cents smily

There is plenty of precedent for similar sounding names violating trademark. I remember in the 80s, Coors beer sued a small soft drink company called Coares (sp? - pronounced like Cores) which was the family name of the owner. Coors won because it really did sound pretty similar, and could have confused people into buying the wrong product. Mike Rowe Soft is pretty clearly a joke, but if he tried to use it in a similar way to the real MS, then they would certainly have grounds.
Its really all about the intentions of the questionably named company isn't it?

P.S., Spock, we should all be so coherent when drunk.

I thought it was interesting that the paultry amount the corporations offer is comeasurate with how likely they'll have to go to court. Mike Rowe is a 17 yo kid (no money) while the guy that is the original owner of itunes had plenty of money to hire an excellent legal team.

Meman you make an excellent point. However I don't see how that applies in Mike Rowe's case. Perhaps the lawyers could find some fault in why the original owner of intunes chose the name. Some reasonable suspicion. Being in the industry himself (indirectly) he'd be more likely to pick up rumors, put 2 and 2 together and since he was already in it for the money figured he could capitalize off this too. Hey $16.95 or so a year ain't bad for potentially millions!

Except in Mike's case he was given the name when he was born. He didn't have a choice! And his site is free.

IMO, Mike Rowe is exempt of the elbow room trademark owners are granted.

SJP