Universal Tube & Rollform Equipment, which has its web site hosted at Utube.com, is suing Google’s YouTube over domain name similarity and the harm which has been caused by YouTube’s popularity to Utube.com.
As YouTube has grown in popularity, Utube.com’s site has become paralyzed, especially after the Google YouTube deal. Essentially, about 2 million people a month are hearing the name “YouTube” and typing utube.com into their browsers.
“This is an enormous expense and distraction for us. Contact with our customers has been disrupted, so I fear we have lost sales,” Universal Tube owner Ralph Girkins said in a statement. “We have even been contacted by police in Australia accusing us of having child pornography on our Web site. I resent this personally and this confusion is hurting our business.”
News.com reports that “The lawsuit asks that YouTube stop using the youtube.com domain name or reimburse Universal Tube for the cost of establishing a new corporate identity.”
Sound ridiculous? Universal Tube & Rollform Equipment says that the demand on the site created by YouTube’s popularity is leading to lost sales. Being in the niche industrial equipment sector, a sale lost for Universal Tube could mean losing $150,000.
I wouldn’t have thought these people would have a leg to stand on, given that utube is not their trading name, but only their URL. Indeed, they sell nothing under the name of utube at all. If I was them I’d register a domain name like universaltube or similar for their main site, I’d then put up a page at utube.com with a couple of CPM ads and links to their new site, and to YouTube, that way they could actually cash in on the traffic.
I think what is ridiculous is the glossing over the part about the Austrailian police complaint.
To me, that is very serious.
The trough gets filled and the pigs line up at the trough….now it’s no wonder why YouTube was pretending that they were losing money – as soon as people realized they had money (and as soon as the even deeper pockets of Google get behind them) people are suing YouTube left and right!
What a bunch of noobs! Geez, they are COMPLAINING about too much traffic…total noobs. If they were smart they would put monetize the traffic with something as simple as adsense by stating at the top of the page: “Are you looking for videos?” then have ads below.
yes, phil, wow they are total noobs. are you 12?
I think they have a legit problem, but not necessarily a legit reason to sue youtube. They can’t afford to have random people contacting them all day, especially when 99.9% of the people aren’t there for the right purpose. If they changed their url for the business and then used that traffic to make money by putting up Adsense, Youtube may have sued THEM. And then their biz url wouldn’t be as succinct, which is VERY important for a business.
http://www.whois.ws/whois-com/ip-address/utube.com/
utube.com registered on 1996-10-25 so they are not noobs in this world of internet, btw youtube.com born on 2005-02-14 so this baby cum giant is already make the old noob mad
Are the owners of utube crazy? I would love to have 2 million hits a month!!! OPPORTUNITY IS KNOCKING!!! Redesign the main page to address the issues of the visitor and do an adsence/affiliate program and probally earn $100,000 a month off of it. (I would even think about BUYING their domain for a $150,000 if there are a few other investors that want to pitch in on it with me!!!)
So those guys are sad because they are getting higher in ranking and more exposed without doing nothing?! I would actually call them son of a gun rather than poor heavily loaded site!
I have heard the other kind of legal claims as well “Why did Google remove me from their search engine, this dropped our sales!” So you shouldn’t decrease my hits, and neither you should increase them as well!!!
This is total non-sense. And why did those guys wait till Google acquired it to make the claim? Perhaps to be able to make more money!
This is some old news. The domain has been sold!
This is some old news. The domain has been sold!