mouse in a room of elephants
Hey Gang!
My name is Chuck Fox and I'm new to this forum. I've got a situation that some of you may be interested or curious about and I also seek constructive thought regarding this matter. To that end, I've decided to visit a few of the more relevant forums to get this message out and seek comments and suggestions. Basically, throw this into the "court of public opinion."
First a little background on an odd and unfathomable "David vs. Goliath" story I find myself involved with.
On Saturday, March 1, 2003, as I was relocating all of my client and business websites to another hosting provider, I accidentally mis-typed my domain in a client email, omitting the ".com" suffix.
I usually check to make sure the links in my emails are correct by clicking on them, and was pleasantly surprised to find it direct to Google, with "thinkvision" as the search term.
My http://ThinkVision.com site was listed first, but what really surprised me was the other listing under mine that led to IBM's press release announcing their new product-line of flat-panel monitors.
These monitors went by the name of "ThinkVision."
http://www.pc.ibm.com/us/think/thinkvision.html
What I'm looking for are people such as one might find on this forum to visit my blog and --
A) Let me have it...
B) Let me know what you think...
C) Tell me where I can stick it...
D) Give IBM some shtick!
If any of you have ever had any kind experience, similar or not, in the domain name game, I'd like to hear from you. If, after visiting, you've got an opinion of this situation, by all means let me know about it by commenting, or posting to the blog forum.
The home page of the blog explains this anomaly in more detail, so I'll leave it at that and hope to hear from you. Hopefully positive thoughts, though negative opinion is accepted also, cuz that's the nature of blogging
In advance, thanks for the help. Rock On!
Best,
Chuck Fox
"The creation of a thousand forests is in one acorn."
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson
Suzanne posted this at 14:49 — 27th May 2004.
She has: 5,507 posts
Joined: Feb 2000
So you haven't been using it, but now that you know they might want it, you are and now you want to sell it to them for a high profit and you feel somehow you're David in this story!?
I'll tell you a real story, when Microsoft started a section of their site offering technical computing advice aimed at women, they infringed on an existing group of women doing the same thing. This group engaged in a legal battle with MS and WON. Why? Because they were in the right.
IBM doesn't need your domain name. IBM is their claim to fame, and they have that. If they wanted a memorable url that banked on that fame, they could use thinkvision.ibm.com or ibm.com/thinkvision or similar easily. They wouldn't be infringing on you in any way at all because a) your "company" was/is fictitious by your own admission and b) your company is not in the field of hardware/monitor development, and so wouldn't be in a position of trademark infringement in the first place even if it did exist.
So, basically, the $10,000 offer was kind of them. They don't need it, and they don't owe you squat.
openmind posted this at 21:49 — 27th May 2004.
He has: 945 posts
Joined: Aug 2001
Aint greed wonderful? that and one of the seven deadly sins...
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