The Strange Case of Canadian Student Mike Rowe and MikeRoweSoft.com

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Mike Rowe is a Canadian university student, notable for being the defendant in a lawsuit filed by Microsoft over the domain name “MikeRoweSoft.com”. In the end, a settlement was agreed, with Rowe granting ownership of the domain in return for some gifts from Microsoft.

MikeRoweSoft.com was initially registered by Mike Rowe in August 2003. He chose the name because of the phonetic similarity to the word Microsoft, while still being a bona fide use of his own name. However, Microsoft saw the domain name as trademark infringement and in January 2004 requested that Mike hand over the domain name. He was “amazed and appalled” at this, and replied back stating his intention not to hand over the domain name.

Microsoft replied back, offering to pay Mike’s out-of-pocket expenses in return for the domain name. However, this came out at only $10, insulting Mike. He responded, asking instead for $10,000. However, in doing this, he unwittingly fulfilled one of the criteria for proving a bad faith domain registration as set out in the Uniform Domain-Name Dispute-Resolution Policy; namely, that as Mike had offered to sell the domain name to the company for profit, it was considered evidence that he had no right or legitimate interest in the domain name. Microsoft declined the offer, and later that month sent Mike a cease and desist order spanning 25 pages, arguing that Mike had always intended to sell the domain name for profit – thus appearing to be cybersquatting – and insisting that the ownership of the domain was transferred to them.

When Mike received the order, he went to the press, spreading publicity for the case, and causing Microsoft to rethink their strategy. They admitted that they may have taken the case “too seriously”, and recognised Mike’s creativity in the domain name. However, trademarks have to be protected, so Microsoft said they were “in the process of resolving this matter in a way that will be fair to him and satisfy our obligations under trademark law.”

Later that month, Microsoft and Mike Rowe reached an out of court settlement – in return for transferring ownership of the domain to Microsoft, Mike would have his expenses paid, help moving to a new site (MikeRoweForums.com), a subscription to MSDN, an Xbox, training for Microsoft certification and an all-expenses-paid trip to the Microsoft Research Tech Fest for him and his parents.

He sold the legal documents from Microsoft’s lawyers on eBay for over $1300.00.

The settlement disappointed a lot of people who were of the belief that Microsoft wouldn’t win the case in a court of law as the domain name was a legitimate use of the name “Mike Rowe”.

In January 2006, the site at MikeRoweSoft.com redirected to mrstudios.net. In April 2006 the site did not exist; as of June 2006, it points at a cpanel.net holding page, and the registrant information shows that Microsoft has since taken ownership of the domain.