Tuesday 5 December 2006

Couch 20

Booooooo.

No, not for England losing at the cricket, but for Bob's venture into podcasting on TheOutdoorsChannel.co.uk being taken off the air because of a letter from US lawyers.

He hasn't said who's sent the hounds in, but I'll be boycotting them anyway as I'll have to waste time rejigging iTunes. Typical bullying attitude from business lawyers. It'd be nice if Bob put in a claim for the new stationery, etc. Y'see it's not just a matter of a new web address, it is a whole pile of effort.

So, why does it matter if a US company has a similar name to a UK one. Just look at Apple.com and Apple.co.uk, not similar at all. BBC.com used to be owned by a US legal firm until the BBC (the good old Blighty Broadcasting Chaps) paid about US$375,000 for the address. Not sued, but paid.

Y'see, TheOutdoorsChannel.co.uk was a spin-off business by Bob, not typosquatting (like gooogle.com). I've also checked iTunes, and there's no-one with a similar name on there.

So give a thought to poor Rose, who won't see her man much over Christmas, as he's slaving away over a hot keyboard, with only the heat from the CD-burner as he has to cut back the pennies to pay for the rebranding because of some US company flexing it's muscles.

So, a hearty "boooooooooooo" to the US lawyers and the ne'r-do-wells who wish to bring their own brand of legal morals to our sceptred isle (which isn't sublet from Cuba).

4 comments:

John Hee said...

at tleast its a quiet time of year for BobC's business. Oh hang on eeerrr......
;-(

AktoMan said...

At least it's 'just' his spin-off business, and the iTunes isn't affected by the URL bullying.

Anonymous said...

Bloody unfair!

I'm not going to go on about 51st state and all that, but i think you know what i mean...

TDaveR (OM Member, too lazy to register to yet another account)

AktoMan said...

I read later that the other company had previously lodged it as a UK trade mark. Whether it's true or not, I'll get my titanium Kar98 from Bob and not the other company.