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Microsoft Agrees Settlement Over MikeRoweSoft.com
GillBates0 writes "CNN's reporting that Microsoft Corp has settled with Mike Rowe, persuading the teenager to give up his domain name in exchange for costs of changing the existing domain to a new Web site, Microsoft certification training, an Xbox, an invitation to a technology festival at Redmond and some other gifts. Includes a choice quote from Microsoft spokesman Jim Desler: 'We wanted to do this in a way that's going to foster his interest in technology'. Mike had received a 25-page letter from Microsoft informing him he was committing copyright infringement, and threatening legal action, as reported earlier on Slashdot."
How exactly does one agree a settlement? Isn't that a bit like setting up someone the bomb?
You are not the customer.
"Microsoft pulls stick out of ass... finds it makes for better PR when carrot is tied to it"... I smell an innovation patent coming.
Cheap bastards could'nt give him a decent console like a PS2 or GC... now the poor canadian guy is stuck on Halo all day!!!!
MSCE training? Jesus, I didn't know they were going to be that hard on him
I am one of many. My idea is not unique, nor do I expect my voice alone to sway you. I speak in a chorus of opinion.
I hope he takes the free publicity & does something good with it. If he can handle this gracefully and turn it into something positive, he can end up being seen doing so by the right people, and turn it into a good opportunity for himself.
Or, he can stay in his room and play with the new Xbox, that's OK too I suppose.
Don't forget the, "I got sued by Microsoft and all I got was this stupid shirt" t-shirt :)
Sounds like Microsoft realized they were getting bad press, so bought him out with.. you guessed it, Microsoft freebie products. Now bad press turns into Microsoft product marketing. Those guys are brilliant in Redmond. Grrr...
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'We wanted to do this in a way that's going to foster his interest in technology'
Then what the hell is he going to do with a Microsoft cert?
...I'm sorry, that was just plain wrong.
666-607: 6th floor apartment of the beast
I would have thought the Microsoft would have wanted some change to the name of the company too? Surely the same problems will arise if he's still calling his business/site Mike Rowe Soft or whatever?
Yes, but since he had fallen in the trap of offering to sell the domain for a good amount of money, he was pretty much done for. This is probably the best option he could go for, but I have to agree that it would have been interesting to see the developments of this story if Mike had chosen otherwise.
DrkBr
I doubt his nice MCSE will help him get a job :)
This is a good way out for both parties, really. While I don't dig Microsoft going after anyone for a domain name, it's a known tactic to squat on "near miss" domains. Usually the speculators aren't bright eyed 17 year old kids, and that tactic would be suitable for the usual bottom feeders. In this case though, where they clearly want to quash that domain, but not cripple some poor teenager, I like this.
Luck favors the prepared, darling.
He's only 17.
Let him have his XBox fun, and some college life to go with it. If he should focus on being all business now at that age, he might grow to regret it later in his life.
But I agree: it's a chance to build some positive ties that he can use to network his way into a job after college.
-Cyc
/.'s 10 Millionth
I have never forgiven my parents for naming me Windows Crashes Too Much Jones.
He'll mod the X-box and run linux on it.
You like your new Mac more than you like me, don't you, Dave? Dave? I asked...She said Yes.
'We wanted to do this in a way that's going to foster his interest in technology'.
...
Naaaaaah, too easy.
<grrr>
Shouldn't that be foster his interest in Microsoft?
I mean come on, an X-box? An MCSE course? And I bet the migration to another webserver has to be to IIS and all.
How far does this extend? Sure, you can sue phonetic copies, but what if someone makes a macrohard.com? Is that infringement as well? Or maybe micrsoft.com, or some other creative misspelling... What are the boundaries for this type of suit?
------- "A true friend stabs you in the front." -Eliot
Master Rowe gets a nice toy or two, and has a career track ahead of him.
In the end, everyone smiles but the lawyers. Good.
This is my post. There are many others like it. If you don't like what you read here, go try one of the others.
He should have taken the first offer of $10. Atleast, that would have been worth something rather than the crap he got.
If you make someone think that you are someone else by using their logo/name, that's trademark violation. If you copy the site itself, that's copyright violation.
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I am an expert in electricity. My father held the chair of applied electricity at the state prision.
What I don't understand is why Microsoft didn't do this from the beginning. They send a legal threat and find out they're dealing with some kid. Instead of turning around to sue the hell out of the kid if they had just offered this from the beginning there would never have been any story and this would be a complete non-issue.
One odd thing: I keep reading about copyright violations in these stories, but shouldn't Microsoft's claims be trademark-related? Copyright doesn't apply to a business name as far as I know.
Regarding the settlement: it mentions the MCSE, the XBox and so forth, but I'm guessing there's money in there somewhere, too. This was a very bad PR situation for Microsoft. Since Mike had the PR on his side, yet is giving up the domain, I'm guessing he got more than just some courses, plane tickets and a game console in return.
I am changing my name to Winifred Dowes (the fact I am male is not relevant!). All my friends will now call me Win, please.
My new Domain is gonna be WinDowesHome.com
Will I get any games with my x-box?
Going on means going far
Going far means returning
The kids name is Mike Rowe, he didn't make it up. He was trying to start his own little software company. Now, I'm sure he knew what he was doing when he registered the name, but frankly, I'm not seeing the problem.
Now if it was me (granted, I'm not a 17 YO anymore), I'd have held out and told MS to bite my shiny metal ass.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
That doesn't mean it was in bad faith, like MS claimed. The kid had an actual business running. He simply decided to make a counteroffer when they came up to him. Had they not, he would've run the site all the same. He wasn't cybersquatting
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Never criticize religion on Slashdot. You will be modded down for "Troll" no matter how factual it is.
If he should focus on being all business now at that age, he might grow to regret it later in his life.
Yeah, look at Michael Jackson
Way to go, dude. You had your five minutes of net.fame, people on the net heard about your phlight, backed you up and sent thousands of dollars your way in order to help you fight the litigious Beast's gorilla attorneys wanting to steal your rightful property. You should have held on! Instead, you just roll over on your back like a sheep and let them bribe you with trinkets. An X-box and a couple of coupons. Ya big loser! You're nothing but a sellout, and Microsoft's henchmen will now ramp up their efforts instead of backing off from such lawsuits and legal threats. No respect. Dipshit.
This was in 1996, I was 14, and I registered gamespotlight.com. I then e-mailed gamespot.com and asked them if they had a problem with it, and they said in fact they did (I was surprised for some reason). They offered to pay me to transfer the domain name, and rather than taking the money, I just did it for free: back then internic let you transfer domains because of trademark disputes for free.
The good deed was graciously recieved. After meeting up with some of the guys at E3, GameSpot then offered me a paid summer internship in San Francisco when I was 16.
Bam! Those were the good ol' days.
- Philosopistry
Philosophistry
Speeking for all teh illiterate monkeys out thair, yew sir our rong.
WWJD.... for a Klondike bar?
i hope his mom checks him for a freshly-shaved spot behind his ear when he gets back.
pr0n - keeping monitor glass spotless since 1981.
Yeah.
"Ha! He took the bait! He said his site was worth $10000 to him! Now his ass is ours! Let's eat his soul!"
"Oh wait! The public is actually sympathizing with this monster? Let's give him an xbox! Make sure to get some nice press photos of us and our new best friend."
Here are the rules for trademarking names and infringement. This is written for a non-laywer, so the english is fairly free of jargon.
The commonly quoted case is that of LEXUS the law archival and search company and Toyota who wanted to use the same name of thier luxury division. LEXUS sued and lost.
BetterWhoIs Domain Search
At least this Mike Rowe dude could make an argument that it was his fricking name.
McDonald's reports that its new "Honeymooner" happy meal will be cancelled due to legal threats from SCO.
"Look Lois, the two symbols of the Republican Party: an elephant, and a fat white guy who is threatened by change."
I myself being a highly trained at Microsoft products was what made me realixe just how plain stupid they are sometimes. Having knowledge in linux before i started training Windows 2000 server made me understand that linux does many things easier for an admin. Account management is a breeze in linux as opposed to the nightmare of managing domains, AD and security principles (barf!).
The more he reads about MS stuff the more the kid is going to understand that there are much better and faster ways of doing things.
Pople who tend to stay at the MS camp is often people who dont quite understand what happens behind the bells and whistles.
Typing this away at my 25th reboot installing a frigging client machine Running W2k after having installed a fully fledged Linux Terminal Server with 1 (one) reboot.
Aww, these moments make me appriciate the awkwardness of VI.
HTTP/1.1 400
Anyone who types MikeRoweSoft when they mean Microsoft is too dumb to be using a computer and the Internet anyway.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Probably already been posted, but I wonder how these guys are managing to survive.
The real reason Microsoft sued is because when you say "Microsoft" into their speech-to-text converter you get...
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
But be honest! if this had been Gentoo, SUSE or any other Linux oriented company, giving this kid crap lying around in the marketing department would have been applauded.
What the hell did you expect MS to give him?
Redhat certified engineering courses? A free G5 Powermac with Steve Jobs' Autograph?Get real! Finally MS is doing the right thing (TM) and you STILLwhine!
Now lets talk about XML patents!
Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
Mike Roe Soft is indeed a soundalike to mic-ro-soft, on this point you can not debate. It took me a second after reading it to make the sound connection, what the hell does Mike Roe have to do with Microsoft, who is this Mike Roe person, what the hell does Micro.. oh yea....
Hotmale.com is a much closer soundalike, and a hell of alot more likely to be a miss then mikeroesoft.com. Haven't you been in an office and had people yell "I was just checking my mail and I'm getting gay porn popups from hell".
Why doesn't Microsoft go after sites that offer gay porn rather then products for the microcomputer? After all... some people might be offended by gay porn popups from hell, and might learn to associate Microsoft's mail service with gay nakid men.
There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary. SHUT UP! There is no shut up. There is no shut up.
Shmuck: "Hey look, this guy's got a clever domain"
Schmuck's manager: "This guy's ripping us off"
Schmuck's manager's manager: "This could ruin us, rake him over the coals, call legal"
Legal: "Hmmm... let's ask him to stop and see if he demands money"
Mike Rowe: "$10? Are you nuts? That's not worth the hassle, not for something like $10k would I do it"
Legal: "Congratulations, you're a cybersquatter, cease and desist or die."
Mike Rowe: "Wow, these guys suck, I'm going to the press."
Press: "Clippy slices 17-year old's jugular"
Microsoft PR: "Holy shit!, get Bill's lackey, get Legal!"
Bill's Lackey: "Geeze man, Legal, back off. PR, give the kid what any reasonable 17 year old would want for the hard work he's put into his domain. And throw in some extra stuff... not so much to make it profitable though."
Marketing: "and get some brands into the press"
I think he would of gotten his $10K if he held out. But he probably got a few thousand worth of Microsoft goodies + a visit to Redmond isn't 1/2 bad.
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Micro$oft never changes their mind, never yields to public outcry, no matter how outrageously far they might have overstepped any particular line. In fact, as a company they've always sort of delighted in the fact that they didn't have to make decisions based on practicality and expediency: they've always wanted to world (read, competitors) to understand that they will do what they want, when they want and to whom they wish to do it.
So, I think it's a pretty big thing when the Redmonster backs down, even over something this silly (and arguably, that they had no claim to in the first place). No, this is not like them apologizing to Apple for stealing-and-ruining their OS (or, to be fair, like Apple doing the same to Xerox-PARC) or changing their mind on just how hard it actually would be to de-couple the browser from the OS, but I think it's an indication of a subtle cultural shift. Maybe it was Ballmer's off-day?
In addition, I commend young Mr. Rowe for taking as much out of them as they'd give, even if their motives were PR-driven rather than a sincere wish to right a wrong. Besides, the more experience he gains with ASP/.NET, the more he'll realize he was smart to be heading in the direction of PHP to begin with. *snicker*
"Don't matter how New Age you get, old age is gonna kick your ass." - Utah Phillips
time to register www.SewKnee.com
My days of not taking you seriously are certainly coming to a middle...
...an invitation to a technology festival at Redmond...
sounds like an ambush to me...
We all know what a software festival at Redmond means. He'll spend 6 days and 7 nights in a re-education and brainwashing resort.
The CNN article doesn't say that Microsoft wooed him over with this set of cash and prizes. and judging by what the prizes are, I'd wager that Mike set these terms, and Microsoft said "okay".
A win-win situation for both parties involved.
At least they are going to give him and MCSE so he'll know how to re-image/re-boot his XBox when it BSODs on him.
How is this no different than Lindows? Very similiar names, and they probably chose the name because of the closeness to a popular product of M$. Sure, you can argue that point, but can M$ patent/copywrite words that sound similar to their name or products?
Darn. I was hoping the kid would counter sue. Although, I can't blame him. I would probably sell out too -- but since I already have an XBox -- I would hold out for the $1M instead.
SPAM solution made easy: 1 spammer, 5 cords of rope, 5 hourses, and fireworks. Be creative.
The visit to Redmond is probably so Bill can kick his butt in person.
Karma: It's all a bunch of tree-huggin' hippy crap!
Best of all, if he acts fast he might be able to swipe a better domain in a week or so:
One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
Schmuck: Some kid named their group "Mike Rowe Soft."
Schmuck's Manager: He's riding the coattails of our trademark. Legally, we have to get him to stop.
Legal: Please stop using this or we will be forced to puruse this legally.
Mike Rowe: $10? This is worth $10k.
Legal: You're setting a price? We owe it to our shareholders to pursue this.
Mike Rowe: Oh, crap! I didn't realize trademark law existed! Could we settle?
Legal: Sure. Here's some cool stuff if you change your domain name like we requested in the beginning.
Mike Rowe: Cool, thanks!
Slashdot: M$ IS RAKING A 17-YEAR OLD OVER THE COALS!!!11
Once established, a trademark must be "policed" to maintain rights. If you allow your mark to become synonymous with others' goods or services, you run the risk that your trademark rights will be lost because the name may be deemed to have become "generic" and, thereby no longer identifies a source, but a good or service available from several sources.
From http://www.mit.edu:8001/activities/e-club/8.html
Call me cynical if you must but this smells of a rat to me. I doubt that anyone who registered a domain so similar to a huge corporations trademark could claim utter surprise when Microsoft got involved in this however right or wrong that involvement was.
I think there is a strong possibility that Mike Rowe planned this all along, what did he have to lose? If it came down to it he could surrender the domain and he's lost $10, once they have the domain Microsoft have no reason to push for anything else.
On the other hand he could enrage Microsoft run to the media and make it look like the big bad guy is squashing the little tiny guy and seeing if Microsoft caved and gave him free stuff, he seems to of got lots of traffic to his site(along with a nice little money making banner advert) and according to the article Microsoft are going to pay to redirect his traffic so whatever he renames it to is likely to is likely to be more successful then it would have been had none of this ever happened. Also when you think about it mikerowesoft is a really lame name.
In Soviet Russia Slashdot cliches use you
Ok, so the domains mikeroesoft.org, .info, .biz, and .us are open. If I have been reading things correctly and I register these, then I get a free Xbox and certification?
SIGFAULT
The XBOX was a good idea.
Until he decides to throw a mod chip in it and open up Mike's house of XBOX hacking.
It all goes downhill from there...
See, it is only funny to those with asthma. Everyone else assumes that it is offensive. What a world we live in.
No, it's just another way of saying "Go to hell".
Why does Microsoft want to own MikeRoweSoft.com? Why didn't they just ask Mike to change MikeRoweSoft.com to a page saying "MikeRoweSoft.com has been renamed/moved to _MikeRoweForums.com_ to avoid confusion with the _Microsoft Corporation_."?
The shareholder is always right.
Actually in our country that is just a good way to make money. You either copyright an idea or reserve a domain and then you sell the rights for a ton of money to someone who can actually do something with it. It's not bad faith its simply good business. Acquire something that you think will be sellable someday, then hold out till you get an offer you like.
Um, unless I missed something what the kid did was trademark infringement, not copyright infringement.
He wasn't putting pirated MS software on his site, and I just missed that part, was he?
"MicroSoft" is a trademark, not a piece of literature or other artistic work.
the only reason they gave him an xbox at all is because it cost them less to give it away than to sell it, after the tax write off.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers