Microsoft vs. MikeRoweSoft (2004) | Hacker News Reader

Microsoft vs. MikeRoweSoft (2004)

en.wikipedia.org

49 pointsaragonite8 comments

Hah, I remember this. Talk about a missed opportunity. I’m glad an attorney picked up the scent here and offered pro bono services but they should have pressed way harder because it seems Microsoft’s argument was pretty weak. The fact that Microsoft ended up compensating anything at all, shows that all they really wanted was the domain which would have probably been worth enough to be set for life and still be able to donate to charity.

I find it hard to believe anyone at Microsoft really cared about his domain name since its unlikely to have ever caused actual confusion and thus don't really see why they would have paid him any significant amount of money for it.

AFAICT Microsoft simply had a relationship with a Canadian law firm who was effectively the IP equivalent of an ambulance chaser to pad their billable hours and they went after the kid.

I kinda doubt anyone important at Microsoft was even really aware of the situation until the easy-to-sell David v Goliath news story about it went viral.

Yeah you’re right, that’s much more plausible and all the more comical too.

Reminds me of this story about all the ridiculous .NYC domains Mike Bloomberg's lawyers defensively registered, and how even Bloomberg's representative was caught off guard ("It's news to us. This appears to be overly-aggressive legal due diligence, and we're only keeping the straightforward addresses")

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/michael-bloomberg-nyc-domain-...

The story of of nissan.com is quite interesting too -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nissan_Motors_v._Nissan_Comput... (one of the related links on the MikeRoweSoft page).

> Nissan Motors v. Nissan Computer was a lengthy court case between the two parties over use of the name Nissan and the domain name nissan.com.[2] The case has received national attention in the U.S.

Wikipedia is light on detail about the case (eg. outcome and rationale / jurisprudence), and some of the linked references (eg. Wired article) are dead. Would love to hear another paragraph or two from you on it.

Edit: This is one-sided but provides some more detail: https://web.archive.org/web/20220306225900/https://www.diges...

This reminded me of Michaelsoft Binbows. [0] Theres a great YouTube video on the topic as well, a YouTuber went to Japan after finding it via VR Google Maps and witnessed the building for himself. [1]

[0] https://en.everybodywiki.com/Michaelsoft_Binbows

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QRIklga9IBQ&t=0s

I had a developer friend called Maico. His email was maicosoft@ I aways found it funny

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