tinyurl.com/taltn -> blog.washingtonpost.com/posttech/2006/11/youtube_sued_by_utube_1.html
com, for the online video site where people watch entertaining home-made videos. UTube said it is now receiving 70,000 visitors to its site per day, a figure that is climbing, because so many people confuse it with the world's biggest Internet video site. You'd think that would be good for business, even if you are selling heavy machinery, but Utube said that was not the case. com has destroyed the value of Plaintiff's trademark and Internet property, repeatedly caused the shutdown of Plaintiff's Web site, increased Plaintiff's Internet costs by thousands of dollars a month, and damaged the Plaintiff's good reputation." " The company is seeking an unspecified amount in damages. completes its purchase, hasn't responded to the lawsuit yet. In an email to me, YouTube declined to comment on the suit.
given that the "utube" trademark in question was only registered a week and a half ago, I would have to think that this lawsuit is probably not going anywhere. might be grounds for a counter claim and ill bet thye trademarked youtube Posted by: chronoss | November 1, 2006 11:10 PM Pretty silly basis for a lawsuit: The letter "U" and the word "You" are pronounced the same (and sometimes used interchangably in webspeak), so let's sue YouTube, who incidentially just got bought by a filthy rich company, because a significant portion of the population spells YouTube as UTube when typing a web address. Posted by: David | November 1, 2006 11:54 PM Just because lots of people never learned that YouTube is YOUTube, not UTube, doesn't mean that YouTube owes UTube any money, right? com that reveled in the fact they were a typo away from the search giant. To satisfy my curiosity I misspelled Google and Yahoo and apparently they shelled some cash out to purchase those old domains and direct surfers to the right place. They stood to make a lot of money by transferring their domain name to YouTube. That money could've created them a new web identity (a major point they are whining about to their lawyers). Instead they will spend lots of money (hopefully) and lose the case (they better). Cause if they don't, domain owners like myself may have a new way to gain revenue: sue your neighbors! Google just spent 165 BILLION DOLLARS to buy YouTube, do you really think they wouldn't shell out a few MILLION to buy a website that would increase their web traffic? UTube suddenly hopes that Google will spend money on them? Posted by: Reality Check | November 2, 2006 01:21 AM In contradiction to my first post, the recent trademark registration doesn't actually make UTube more likely to lose. In fact, It slightly increases the work YouTube will have to do to defend themselves. Posted by: Jake | November 2, 2006 01:35 AM According to the Trademark office the UTube moniker has been in use since 1996. The extra traffic on UTube's site is costing them real money. Posted by: DT | November 2, 2006 11:49 AM This is like a small business suing a sports stadium across the street because all the extra foot traffic going to his store is costing him money. Most businesses would be thrilled to have more foot traffic. Like Chronoss said, put up some ads to help cover the cost. There are sites out there who would drool over this chance. com to one of those domain squakers for money Posted by: Dave | November 2, 2006 12:08 PM I'm glad it's not My Tube ! Bill G- Posted by: Bill Godwin | November 2, 2006 12:12 PM Except the vast majority of YouTube's visitors probably aren't in the market for actual tubing. So Universal Tube's cost of business is going up due to increased bandwidth use, but their profit increase is probably negligible, at best. Posted by: To Dave | November 2, 2006 12:35 PM Dave: Actually, it's more like the people going to the sports stadium are tromping through your yard and flower garden to get to the stadium. User reviews and comments that include profanity or personal attacks or other inappropriate comments or material will be removed from the site. Additionally, entries that are unsigned or contain "signatures" by someone other than the actual author will be removed. Finally, we will take steps to block users who violate any of our posting standards, terms of use or privacy policies or any other policies governing this site.
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