From: rhinoceros (rhinoceros@freemail.gr)
Date: Wed Apr 07 2004 - 13:02:02 MDT
It gets more interesting. What was I saying about how Google was driven by engineering rather than marketing? Here is what happened now:
<begin quote>
Google's Gmail headache grows with trademark claim
Reuters, 04.07.04, 9:20 AM ET
http://www.forbes.com/home_europe/newswire/2004/04/07/rtr1325818.html
LONDON, April 7 (Reuters) - First, it was privacy advocates who vowed to fight Google's proposed e-mail service, Gmail. Now, a small-cap independent investment research firm said it owns the trademark to "Gmail" and it intends to battle to keep it.
<snip>
"When the news came out about Google's Gmail last week, I went to the U.S. patent and trademark authorities. I thought maybe we were in trouble. But they hadn't (registered)," Shane Smith, group chief executive of Market Age, told Reuters on Wednesday.
He said that on Saturday he paid the $700 in fees to register "Gmail" under the company's name. The Market Age never registered a "Gmail" Web domain, he added.
<snip>
Shares in The Market Age more than doubled to a high of 27.5 pence on Tuesday after it mentioned its claim on the "Gmail" trademark. The jump was helped by a "buy note" from an analyst at Corporate Synergy.
Shares fell back again on Wednesday, slumping 16 percent to 20 pence.
<end quote>
[rhinoceros]
The next interesting thing is that when I type www.gmail.com in my browser it takes me to gmail.google.com. So, while "Gmail" is now a registered trademark of Market Age, the "gmail.com" web domain is registered to Google. Go figure. We are probably going to see some legal action or some cash changing hands.
On a remotely related note, I can see that domain-name squatting can make money, providing value to the squatters, but can anyone explain how this can be justified? What value does the squatter offer in return? My closest guess is that it is a result of an abuse of the concept of property which has found its way into the legislation. Any other explanations?
As someone once said (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Property),
<begin quote>
It is a moot question whether the origin of any kind of property is derived from nature at all... It is agreed by those who have seriously considered the subject that no individual has, of natural right, a separate property in an acre of land, for instance. By an universal law, indeed, whatever, whether fixed or movable, belongs to all men equally and in common is the property for the moment of him who occupies it; but when he relinquishes the occupation, the property goes with it. Stable ownership is the gift of social law, and is given late in the progress of society. -- Thomas Jefferson
<end quote>
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