Google doesn’t like Boggle or Scrabble or word jumbles in court. Neither do judges, it seems. All those exercises in logic, or perhaps regular arguments with teenagers, proved helpful to Google’s legal team when the owner of googlecheckout.com, googlematching.com, and googleoutdoors.com insisted it wasn’t GOOGLE, but GO OGLE.
“We were just talking,” I told her father, whose hand was now firmly cinched on the back of my neck, talking me out the door.
As not only the word “google,” but also “go” and “ogle” were in the dictionary, Jennifer Burns argued that, especially in the latter pairing, they were not violations of Google’s trademark. She was planning to use the GO OGLE domains as part of an online dating service she was hatching in her mind at that very moment.
Google was unconvinced, and did all but Flick roff (flickr off, get it?).
News of the dispute between Google and Burns is relayed from some routine database cruising by Resource Shelf’s Barry Schwartz, who found 26 domain trademark disputes, 25 of which Google has won.
Froogles.com stands as the lone victor in the string of trademark violation cases, but not without a dissenting opinion in the matter. Interestingly, the owner of Froogles.com, who registered the domain in 2000, accused Google of “reverse domain hijacking.”
But it appears, in Froogles’ case, that the owner didn’t attempt to sell the domain to Google like Ms. Burns. Burns offered each of the domains for $1.25 million, then all for the same price, then $375,000 for all after each time Google refused to buy them.
In addition to the interesting defense that it wasn’t “google,” but “go ogle,” Burns offered up this argument for her legitimate interest in the domains:
All three domain names were registered for this idea I have. The ideas are in my head for my business and that is how my business style has always been for me. For example, with my real estate lots I have purchased, as well as not necessarily having all the finances to build on them yet, my mind is still at work with exactly what I will do with two of the commercial lots for instance. I have ideas for them, but do not have any of my business plans on paper.
However, I do have a concrete idea of what I am going to do with them, just as I do with the domain names. Should domain names be taken from me when I have legitimate interests in them, yet not ready for improving them just yet, and not have my business plans on paper to date? Again, remember, when Complainant contacted me, I had only owned the domain names for less than a year. That is preposterous to expect me to have all my business plans on paper and a crude demand. …
My intentions are to take a class on creating websites sometime within the next year, or as soon as I can get time to do that, and then I will be implementing my own websites at a lower cost than having someone else do it for me since my business plans for this are also nonprofit.
Well, since you put it that way, says the judge, then “no.” All three domains were ordered transferred to Google.
