Your name is Mike Rowe, you can't call your website MikeRoweSoft.com, says Microsoft
from AntBlog701

Your name is Mike Rowe, you can't call your website MikeRoweSoft.com, says Microsoft

A 17-year-old student and a web designer named Mike Rowe created a website called MikeRoweSoft Design, (Domain name MikeRoweSoft.com) Microsoft said they owned it.

The name MikeRoweSoft (or Mike Rowe Soft) has nothing similar to Microsoft, except the "soft" part. But they are the world's largest software company. The software giant of course can afford lawyers and demanding whatever they want.

So this is a common business practice for big companies? Wrote a (usually strong worded) letter and demanding whatever they want. Life is simple, as long as you can afford good lawyers and you can take over whatever you want.

Let's hope Mike Rowe can win this ridiculous request from Microsoft.

CNN has a story on this, Microsoft takes on teen's site MikeRoweSoft.com:

"Since my name is Mike Rowe, I thought it would be funny to add 'soft' to the end of it," said Rowe.

Microsoft, however, is not amused.

It has demanded that he give up his domain name. In November, Rowe received a letter from Microsoft's Canadian lawyers informing him he was committing copyright infringement.

"I didn't think they would get all their high-priced lawyers to come after me," Rowe said.

He wrote back asking to be compensated for giving up his name. Microsoft's lawyers offered him $10 in U.S. funds. Then he asked for $10,000.

On Thursday, he received a 25-page letter accusing him of trying to force Microsoft into giving him a large settlement.

"I never even thought of getting anything out of them," he said, adding that he only asked for the $10,000 because he was "sort of mad at them for only offering 10 bucks."

A screen shot of MikeRoweSoft.com, in case it got handed to Microsoft.