Spring Break
Microsoft had no right to take domain name
By: Lauren Esposito
Issue date: 2/6/04 Section: Opinion
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.
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