Plaidophile: Yay for phonetic similarity

January 19, 2004

Yay for phonetic similarity (linkage)

by fluffy at 7:51 PM

From an article about a kid named Mike Rowe being sued by Microsoft for his webdesign business' name being infringing: (emphasis mine)

Rowe registered the name in August. In November, he received a letter from Microsoft's Canadian lawyers, Smart & Biggar, informing him he was committing copyright infringement.

I just found that vaguely amusing.

Comments

#1706 Obsidious

01/20/2004 05:32 am

Unless Microsoft has a copyright for "MikeRoweSoft" I don't see what they're going to do about it.

I thought the whole look and feel argument had been lost in the 80s? Wink

#1707 Anonymous 01/20/2004 06:37 am

It probably has to do with trademarks, not copyrights.

#1708 Obsidious

01/20/2004 02:20 pm

Then why was copyright infringement stated specifically[1]?

Either way, it looks like this thing will die down quickly. I saw a blurb about it in my local paper about it. I guess Microsoft can't handle the bad publicity, because they are backing down(so far, anyway).

[1] Correction, I believe trademark was also mentioned. But Copyright infringement was the initial complaint. =)

#1709 fluffy

01/20/2004 02:23 pm

Reporters sometimes make mistakes too. A surprising number of people don't know the difference between trademark, copyright, and patent, and tech reporters don't seem to even know the difference between bandwidth and CPU usage so I don't see why they should be taken 100% at their word.

#1710 crisco_kid (unregistered) 01/20/2004 04:18 pm Slightly OT

The name of the law firm reminded of the slogan of the Town of Biggar.