I just recieved a newsletter with this snippet in :
* Microsoft has backed down from their hard line stance over a 17 year old
Canadian student's domain name. The MS lawyers served papers on Mike Rowe
because they claim
www.mikerowesoft.com infringes on their copyright. As he
had worked many hours on the site, he asked for some compensation for giving
up his domain, and they offered him the out of pocket expenses he had
incurred - $10.00 (US). Figuring that two could play the game, he requested
$10,000.00 for the time and effort. MS went stupid on him, accused him of
intending to sell his domain name to Microsoft for a large cash settlement,
and generated some really bad PR for themselves in the process.
The saga of Mike Morris, who has owned http://www.mikerosoft.ca/ for two
years, is very similar. In this case, Microsoft has left the domain
unchallenged until they came down on Mike Rowe. Now they have set their
lawyers on him.
Does MS think we are all so stupid that we could possibly mistake either of
these sites for theirs, simply because they SOUND alike???
[I just got the word that Mike Rowe and Microsoft have reached a settlement
- MS will be paying for Mike's out of pocket expenses and throwing in an
X-Box for him to change the name. The site mentions that he will have the
details posted soon.]
(Source: Common Sense Security Newsletter-http://markkaren.com/markkaren/security/)