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With the sale of YouTube to Google, Inc. (NYSE:GOOG) there has been increased web chatter about possible lawsuits against either the new owners or the old for various copyright, and fair (or unfair) usage issues. One lawsuit that is already going forward however, is in the less-blogged-about area of trademark infringement. From our sister blog, Blogging Ohio, comes the news that the Toledo-based Universal Tube & Rollform Equipment Corporation, a manufacturer of actual tubes (but probably not the kind a certain senator thinks the Internet is made out of) has used the domain utube.com for more than a decade. Unfortunately, since the rise of YouTube, the manufacturing company has seen unwanted hits to its website skyrocket, has had to increase bandwidth, and also had to deal with large amounts of email sent by mistake.
I can't see YouTube changing its name voluntarily, and I can't see a judge ordering them to. However, that's not the only solution Universal Tube is suggesting. If YouTube wants to continue to call itself that, Universal is willing to step aside, providing Google will pay its re-branding costs. It seems Universal feels that the term utube is an essential component of that brand, which will take years to rebuild using some other domain name. Really?
Universal Tube is right about one thing: it was there first. However, YouTube didn't go out of its way to try and horn in on Universal's brand, and each domain name is unique. How essential to Universal's business success the name utube is will have to be decided by lawyers. This kind of conflict is not new; it happens all the time with 800 numbers, for example. YouTube is not utube, should they have to pay for Web users mistakes?
I don't know if there's any mechanism whereby a start-up can ensure that no possible combination of letters or sounds might be mistaken for another combination if, heaven forbid, that start-up takes off. So my guess is that a settlement will be reached and Google will be cutting a check to Universal Tube & Rollform Equipment Corporation.
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