Victoria webdesigner sued by Microsoft

Here's a story about a kid in the city I live in. Pesky Canadians. :p

A kid in Victoria named Mike Rowe is a webdesigner and he got his own domain and named it www.mikerowesoft.com.

I sure hope the software he says he uses is legal. :D

Right off his news on the site:
I received an email from Smart & Biggar, Microsoft's Canadian lawyers, informing me that I have been committing copyright infringement against Microsoft. They told me that I must transfer my domain name over to Microsoft as soon as possible. I was baffled by this email, yet thought it was funny at the same time. Microsoft was going after a 17 year olds part time business that he put a lot of time into just because it has the same phonetic sound as their company.

I responded to this email saying that I was not ready to give up my domain name since I had put so much time and effort into establishing my name, getting my business cards out and posting my services on the Internet. If I were to give up my domain, I would lose all the time and effort I had put into it. I requested that they offer me a settlement of some sort to help with me losing my business. A few days later I received an email back from them telling me that they would give me all of my out-of-pocket expenses for the domain name, which came to be $10USD. I was surprised that they would offer such a little amount of money to persuade me to hand my domain over to Microsoft. In response to this recent email, I sent one back to them describing how much work I have put into my business and that the domain was worth at least $10000. They refused to give me anything more than $10USD so I proceeded to ignore their most recent email. I didn't hear anything from them after their last email.

Yesterday, January 14, I received a package from the lawyers' office FedEx Priority Overnight. Inside I found a book over an inch thick with a 25 page letter explaining to me that I had all along had the intention to sell my domain name to Microsoft for a large cash settlement. This is not the case, I never thought my name would cause Microsoft to take this course of action against me. I just thought it was a good name for my small part-time business. In this letter it explains that Microsoft's customers could get confused between my page and theirs, which doesn't make any sense since Microsoft doesn't design websites. They do, however, sell a program called Microsoft FrontPage, which they say can cause some confusion between me making websites for my customers and them selling a program to make websites to their customers. I think it is just another example of a huge corporation just trying to intimidate a small business person (and only a 17 year old student at that) to get anything they want by using lawyers and threats. It reminds me of the Starbucks thing against the little coffee shop in the Queen Charlotte Islands.

I was reading this earlier on another board. Just because he's 17, he can't play the stupid card. He intentionally used the phonetic likeness, there's no way you can do that and not know what you're doing.

If he designs websites, then there's no reason for the "soft" to be there, which mostly relate to software in that context. mikerowedesigns.com or mikerowedev.com would have been very suitable (No I didn't check to see if they were available, nor did I check to see if there was another company with the same phonetically sounding name, they were just possible examples).

The invisible hand is reaching into the Canadian pocket.

I think the lawsuit is ridiculous. I can't see how just because it's phonetically similar makes it copyright infringement. Esp when his name is Mike Rowe.... Too bad he doesn't have a bunch of money to take this one to court with a good lawyer.

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Apache/1.3.27 Server at www.mikerowesoft.com Port 80

Site seems to be down... look like microsuck won...

In fact the name is similar only when prononced.. but is typed in very difirent way... so its not like people who buy a domaon with a minor typo in it... if someone looking for the microsoft webpage fall on his page he as to be a very poor typist... and the the look thing...

And to confuse this 17 year old design job for moronsoft.. you have to be really dump...

http://www.microsuck.com
Sad...

If he meant it or not, they have no right to take down his site. It's spelled totally different.

They just talk about it on La revanche des NerdZ (A show for gekk in french) and they show the site... the look is not even the same... And the real title is Mikerowesoft Design!

And he does not use any material form microsoft

Hmm, I see adoebee.com is available. Who cares right? I mean even though it's phonetically the same, I'm really going to talk about deer and bumblebees! I swear I didn't even think about Adobe when I thought of the name! I r dumb!

Geez. The anti-ms drone syndrome gets old. We all know, had Microsoft never existed, he would have come up with that exact same name right? Riiiight.

Even if it did influence his name, why does it give microsoft to take it away from him?

Microsoft has no reason to take it away. Unless they have the name "Mikerowesoft" copyrighted, they are friggin dumb.