Foo - 17 year old scaring Microsoft

Link (http://www.canada.com/technology/story.html?id=5C25C0CF-557A-4289-8AEE-CD5EBF987D3F)

Apparently, Microsoft is concerned about www.mikerowesoft.com, a site maintained by a 17 year old Canadian named Mike Rowe.

The ironic thing is that this guy's site would have never received so much attention if Microsoft would have left it alone. Do they really believe that people would accidentally type in mikerowesoft instead of microsoft?

Mike Rowe Soft (http://www.mikerowesoft.com/)

I'm not sure if this is in the right thread. A part of me wants to believe that Microsoft is just kidding and that this belongs in the Jokes thread.

He's real and he's making headlines across North America.

Newspaper article (http://www.canada.com/search/story.aspx?id=9b1d9a7f-202b-4edc-afd9-f243b4591f6f)

Unfortunately, it looks like he was a victim of his own success.

He has temporarily closed the site (according to news last night). He asked for a settlement and they refused...it will be an interesting battle thats for sure. Considering it is his actual name.

Iguess he lied to the news then haha

Trademark law requires the trademark holder to make a good faith effort to stop people from infringing on their trademark. If you fail to do this too often, you can lose your trademark.

So big companies sending scary cease-and-desist letters to teenagers are only doing it because otherwise when some big Taiwanese company named Mikrosoft introduced Mikrosoft Windowz, Microsoft would not have any recourse and Mikrosoft could claim that the trademark was lost because Microsoft failed to enforce it.

Often the big companies couldn't care less if you actually respond to the cease and desist letter, they just need to know that you got it. But if Microsoft knowingly let someone use their trademark it could be lost.

Frankly, I don't see how he has a case. The addition of the "soft" at the end of the site name allows for DIRECT association with a well established trademark.

What's even dumber is that Microsoft couldn't find a way to make this go away very quietly.

-mark

He asked for a small amount of 10,000...for the bad publicity you think paying the kid off would be worth it seeing as a lot of people in the industry already see microsoft as evil. This just ads to the bullying. Going to slashdot to see what the geeks say :)

I don't know,
Mike Rowe Software
mikerowesoft.com makes perfect sense to me.
I believe his site is down due to being flooded with
traffic since the story broke.
I bet he gets offered a nice big settlement (over his
$10k), signs nondisclosure agreements and the whole
thing quietly goes away (which is what the evil empire
would prefer).
Marty

To Bill Gates 10,000 dollars is not even worth spitting on.

It's probably not worth $10000 to microsoft, but then again, they're now spending a lot on legal fees. The kid is right though, for MS to offer him $10 for the domain name is INSULTING. That's the cost of registering the name for 1 year, and he would probably lose it permanantly.

I remember a story last year about Victoria's Secret suing a man named Victor who ran a lingerie shop with a similar name for "trademark dilution." Weird stuff, but this guy was at least making money off of the play on names, not just hosting a personal site.

This guy currently has 673 people browsing his forums. Compare that to Bikeforums that has 107 and Anandtech which is one of the bigger forums around that has 392. That is just insane.

Trademark law requires the trademark holder to make a good faith effort to stop people from infringing on their trademark. If you fail to do this too often, you can lose your trademark.

So big companies sending scary cease-and-desist letters to teenagers are only doing it because otherwise when some big Taiwanese company named Mikrosoft introduced Mikrosoft Windowz, Microsoft would not have any recourse and Mikrosoft could claim that the trademark was lost because Microsoft failed to enforce it.

Often the big companies couldn't care less if you actually respond to the cease and desist letter, they just need to know that you got it. But if Microsoft knowingly let someone use their trademark it could be lost.

There is another vital part of the trademark laws too that not a lot of people are considering. In order for the company who feels that their trademark is being infringed upon to prove that their is a trademark infringement, there has to be some kind of proof that the "bad guys'" product(s) are similar to the product of the company. So if mikerowesoft makes computer software and other products that Microsoft makes, there is a legitimate claim. If two people hold the same name (by coincidence), but are selling two different products, the courts would be hard pressed to believe that Microsoft's customers would be confused by seeing Mikerowesoft to the point where Mikerowesoft would benefit monetarily from the confusion.

A lot of people focus on the obvious part of trademark infringement, but there's a whole lot more in the underlying language of trademark/patent/copyright infringmement that meets the eye.

I'm not stupid. I think I know the difference between Microsoft and Mikerowesoft. Microsoft just automatically assumes that consumers are that stupid.

Koffee