Microsoft had no right to take domain name

By: Lauren Esposito

Posted: 2/6/04

Mike Rowe only wanted to create his own Web site. But this past November, the Microsoft Corporation sent an e-mail to the Canadian high school student and ordered him to close his site, MikeRoweSoft.com, which the company considers to violate Microsoft trademark rights. In an attempt to convey the company's "generosity," Microsoft offered the young man $10 to sign the domain name over to them, which would be enough to cover the initial setup fee for the domain name.

Why the company believed it had a right to take a young man's personal Web site with virtually no compensation is beyond comprehension and unfair. Just because the name sounds similar to the name of the corporation does not give Microsoft the right to take it without proper compensation for all of the work that was put into it.

While Microsoft's response may seem a bit ridiculous, it infuriated Rowe that a giant corporation would try to take his personal site and only offer him $10.

"The $10 is pretty insulting for all the work I've put into my Web site," Rowe said. "That's why I asked for the $10,000 - because I was mad at the low amount they offered."

This is just one example of the type of frivolous law suits that the United States court systems encounter every day. Companies and individuals believe they are being attacked by others, yet they are not.

Rowe had not set out to steal business or money away from the lucrative corporation. He had only thought that the name, which consisted of his personal first and last names, was interesting and fitting, partly due to the fact that his site was dedicated to Web developing. Soon after Rowe refused Microsoft's $10 offer, he received a 25-page letter from the corporation explaining how Microsoft's customers could get confused between his site and the company site. That argument leads to a whole other debate. The name of the Web site developed by Rowe was similar in sound, not in spelling, to the corporation's Web site.

Basically, Microsoft did not give its consumers credit for knowing the name of the software they use on a daily basis. It is actually stating that the company considers its consumers quite dense, as they may become confused as to site is the correct one in helping them with their software troubles.

"We take our trademark seriously, but in this case maybe a little too seriously," said Microsoft spokesman Jim Desler. "That said, we appreciate that Mike Rowe is a young entrepreneur who came up with a creative domain name."

Once Microsoft determined that it may have taken the domain name case one step too far, it publicly admitted to overreacting. Rather than taking advantage of an average high school student, Microsoft discovered that its young adversary was rather creative and savvy.

With all of the quarreling over this particular domain name, Microsoft may have developed more problems than if they had just left the whole thing alone.

Microsoft's legal department may be busier than it anticipated during the next few months because in the past few weeks, all the top-level domain extensions for MikeRoweSoft (.co.uk, .net, .org and .tv) have been snapped up, and MikeRoweSoft.tv has been put up for sale on eBay.

As an agreement had been reached between Rowe and Microsoft last week, it was by far a win for the little man over the bigger corporation. In exchange for the domain name, Microsoft will pay for Rowe's expenses, the cost of switching over to a new site, provide training for certification on Microsoft's products, a subscription to Microsoft's developer program Web site, and an XBOX video game console with games, as well as an invitation to bring his parents along for a visit to Microsoft's Redmond, Wash., headquarters for the company's annual technology fair.

If there was truly an infringement on a trademark name, then, action should take place to rectify the problem. But in this case, there was no problem to begin with - just one that was thought up by some big-time corporate lawyers who made a situation for their company worse than what it was to start.