Gary Price over at SearchEngineWatch points to a news-article that states Google has emerged victorious in a domain name dispute. Google has sued ’some people’ who were keeping domains that either had a part of the word Google in it, or that were aiming at common typo’s from surfers to then guide the surfers to ’services alike’ or to bad services and the distribution of malware. Could this be the end of the free use of Googlesomething.ext domains? Perhaps, yes.
Here in Belgium, there’s at least one service I know that could suffer a cease and desist because it reproduces Google’s services, but in a colourful regional/local accent. Visit [Hoehel] – pronounced ‘Hoohle’ – and try to understand how the western part of my country speaks. ;)
Well. The site has been in the news multiple times already, and the author doesn’t hide this. He already made his intentions clear to continue his folklorism on another domain, should the big ‘G’ shut him down. That’s why he’s registered [Jagoe]. Stating clearly he will turn his parody to the Yahoo Search, if Google succeeds in the cease and desist.
The cease and desist [already has been delivered] on june 15th 2004, but the author refuses to stop the service, and translated the letter rather ‘freely’ into the Western-Flemish ‘native tongue’.
Refusal to quit Hoehel.be is based on following points :
1. In Belgium, parodies are exempted of any claims.
2. He doesn’t make money of it, it’s not a commercial business.
3. Hoehel and Google are not resembling in characters.
4. He says the logo might look the same, but Google only had it ® on the 21st of March 2005. Which he considers ‘rather’ late.
Back to the lawsuit with an extract from the [NationalArbitrationForum]:
“The National Arbitration Forum announces today that a ruling has been issued in favor of Google regarding rights to the Internet domain names googkle.com, ghoogle.com, gfoogle.com and gooigle.com.”
“A copy of the decision, Google Inc. v. Sergey Gridasov, is available for viewing on the National Arbitration Forum Web site at: http://www.arb-forum.com/domains/decisions/474816.htm”
Interesting reflection of Gary :
“It will be worth monitoring to see if the Googlepex will begin asserting their legal rights over other registered domains that either resemble Google or include the word Google in the domain name.”
The article on [SearchEngineWatch]