MS Sueing for MikeRoweSoft.com

Microsoft has decided to sue a 17 year old Canadian boy over the domain name MikeRoweSoft.com (story).  The boy's name is actually Mike Rowe, and he registered the domain name to host is personal website.  Back in Nov., he received an email from MS telling him to hand over the domain.  He later received another email stating they'd pay him $10 for it.  He was appalled by this and responded back that he'd sell it for $10,000.  Well, that didn't settle well, and just recently he received a nice large book on why he'd be handing over the domain name or be sued.

So, whats the moral?  Don't argue with big companies over domain names if it somewhat infringes on their company name or a product of theirs.  That company has the right to obtain the domain name without you receiving any profits from it.  The story states, however, that MS would not win this time, but only time will tell.

6 Comments

  • Fire the staff that once again embarrasses all of us. They make it so damn hard to proudly proclaim I chose MS technology. Idiots. How about suing the guys who didn't put FTP support in VS.NET, now that would be useful.

  • I'm sure it would cost less to give Mike Rowe $10,000 for HisNameSoft.com than to sic the lawyers on him.

  • Thanks for posting about this, Matt. I was disgusted when I read this story earlier today. Because I am proud to be a Microsoft developer, this is a personal embarrassment.



  • If they would have given the kid 500$ or 1000$ he prolly would have accepted it and everything would be fine, i'm not going to hand over a domain name for 10$ either



    but now MS has all this bad publicity... (which according to marketing standards still contains the word 'publicity'...)



    This could have been solved with more tact

  • What assholes. They have no right to try and take the domain from the guy.

  • Its my childhood picture! :) Just kidding. What if I went and registered www.EyeBeeM.com ... I bet IBM would come after me.

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