Google Loses Domain To Groovle
By Anna Johnson on January 4th, 2010Just before the new year dawned, Google lost its second-ever domain name dispute (out of 65!) when the National Arbitration Forum dismissed the company’s claim that it was entitled to the domain name, Groovle.com.
Google had claimed that the domain name Groovle.com was ‘confusingly similar’ to its Google trademark. The ICANN accredited National Arbitration Forum, however, disagreed in a unanimous decision.
The three person panel – comprising two retired American judges and an American law professor – ruled that Groovle.com was NOT ‘confusingly similar’ to Google. In so doing, the panel found in favor of the two Groovle owners, young Canadian entrepreneurs Jacob Fuller and Ryan Fitzgibbon. Friends from high school, Fuller and Fitzgibbon launched Groovle.com in 2007 to be a place where people could upload photos and customize their Internet start page.
When commenting on the decision, Fitzgibbon made the interesting comment that since they launched Groovle, “Google, Bing and Ask.com have each come out with something similar.”
Hmmm… given the likely competition from such behemoths, maybe Google’s domain name dispute has actually been a marketing boon to Groovle, which has obviously received a lot of publicity from the domain name dispute alone.
As Groovle’s domain name lawyer and Internet law expert, Zak Muscovitch, said: ‘Google clearly miscalculated here.’ But not just from a domain name standpoint – also from a marketing standpoint.
January 9th, 2010 at 1:43 am
Yet another way to gain invaluable free publicity for a new domain or business. Register a domain that looks or feels like one of the big player yet different enough so that you are likely to emerge winner in a domain name lawsuit. Then get them to sue you and enjoy the free publicity!
Can’t think of a name? How about gooale.com or gooble.com or goocgle.com etc. Just run through the alphabets!