Saturday, April 04, 2009

Mike Rowe... soft?

Usually, there is no problem with claiming website domains, certainly here in the USA. In the USA, you can claim a variety of domains, even .com domains, and there is generally no problem as long as nobody else challenges their use.

The only problem occurs if somebody legitimately has a stronger claim to them due to trademarks or other mitigating circumstances. For example, claiming "MikeRoweSoft.com" was famously challenged by Microsoft, but only because there was potential for brand name confusion. Even then though, the case was decided out of court, since its owner, Mike Rowe, also had a strong basis for his claim. (I don't know if Mike could have similarly sued Microsoft. I doubt that he could have done so non-frivolously, especially since he's surely not the only Michael Rowe in the world.)