When Mike Rowe, a Canadian teenager, set up Mikerowesoft.com, he had to know Microsoft would be irritated with the association, however tenuous. But that`s where any semblance of predictability about this saga ends. Otherwise it is a study in inscrutability.
To begin with, nobody could have foreseen just how irritated Microsoft would be, what with 25-page legal documents being served and a free-for-all in the press and discussion rooms. The vendor`s (over?)reaction was especially strange, since the whole episode had until then seemed relatively harmless.
The software giant seldom walks away from a fight, in or out of court.
Carel Alberts, Technology editor, ITWeb
On closer study of the ramifications, however, it appears that what Rowe had done was potentially not that harmless, which showed that Microsoft probably had quite a good case after all.
And then, to top it all, the vendor backed down.
What does it all mean? One has to sift for clues, and what they reveal is that Microsoft`s decision probably had nothing to do with the merits of Rowe`s case, and everything with its growing sensitivity to public opinion. Rowe can consider himself very lucky indeed.
What was he thinking?
But to get back to how it all started, one has to wonder: did Rowe think he would get away with it? It appears so. And to be fair, he was only using his own name, and the addition of the word "soft" only refers to what he does for extra cash, namely software development.
Cut and dried?
So could he win? Not that easily. Cyber-squatting is a well-known irritation on the Web. It consists of registering an Internet domain for purposes of reselling it for a profit.
The US Anti-Cyber-squatting Consumer Protection Act enables trademark holders to sue for up to $100 000 from squatters that register their trade names or names that SOUND SIMILAR to their own domain names. It appeared Microsoft had a case.
Would Microsoft enforce its rights?
Let`s say, for the sake of argument, that Microsoft had the better chance of winning, in the light of the position sketched above. Would it actually press its advantage?
My first instinct would have been to say yes. The software giant (MS has about as many trite aliases as God) seldom walks away from a fight, in or out of court. After Netscape, Novell, Apple and IBM, some kid in Canada must have seemed like a walk in the park.
But for heaven`s sake, cried bulletin boards all over the Net - he`s just a kid! He was just using his own name! Old resentments about Microsoft resurfaced all over the Web, and Microsoft could hardly avoid being seen as a bully.
So, in the end, it backed down.
It must have hurt
It must have been a bitter pill, and Rowe can thank his lucky stars. To begin to understand just how lucky, consider that he`s an inexperienced 17 years old, and Microsoft`s lawyers, apart from not being stupid, are, between them, about 10 000 years older and wiser than him.
Take the matter of the $10 he was offered to pack it in. This was Microsoft`s first legally articulate move, if troublingly cynical.
Rowe, however, never knew what hit him. He probably thought if the great Microsoft could be ridiculous, he would do the company the courtesy of fixing a much more acceptable price, and said it would be an entertaining enough idea if only it could make it a bit more. Like $10 000.
But any lawyer knows that a counter-offer in such a case is a sound basis for arguing that Rowe had been planning to sell Microsoft`s supposed rightful property back to it all along, which points to bad faith, case all but closed.
But then Microsoft backed off. And it had nothing to do with Rowe, but with fear for its own image.
Rowe got 250 000 hits on his site on Tuesday, most of them presumably coming from sympathisers. Someone offered to take over hosting of his site when the load got too much for his previous Internet service provider, and he received lots of pledges to support his quest for a lawyer.
The entire world loves an underdog. Bulletin boards across the Net pledged their support, and even though Microsoft acted within its rights, it`s a fair guess that the company was probably getting a little edgy with the bad press.
(There are other signs that Microsoft`s traditional imperviousness to public sentiment is slowly turning into a new image of responsiveness, even humility. This is true especially around security issues, which it now seems keen to address wholeheartedly for the first time. But that is another matter.)
"We take our trademark seriously, but in this case maybe [we took it] a little too seriously," Microsoft spokesman Jim Desler said in the latest reports. "We appreciate that Mike Rowe is a young entrepreneur who came up with a creative domain name, so we`re currently in the process of resolving this matter in a way that will be fair to him and satisfy our obligations under trademark law."
That`s the court of public opinion for you.
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