Arbitration panel and Google don't agree
SOURCE: Netscape Money and Business
Google's Challenge of 'Froogles' Rejected
WASHINGTON (AP) - Google Inc.'s right to use the name ``Froogle'' for its online shopping service came into question Friday when an arbitration panel rejected the company's challenge of a Web site named Froogles.com.
Two of the three judges on the panel of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or ICANN, rejected Google's argument that Froogles.com was ``confusingly similar'' to Google.
``The dissimilar letters in the domain name are sufficiently different to make it distinguishable from Google's mark,'' the panel found. The name Froogles.com ``creates an entirely new word and conveys an entirely singular meaning from the mark.''
The search-engine company's loss has no immediate impact on its use of the name Froogle. But it means that the Froogles.com name will remain with Richard Wolfe, a disabled Holtsville, N.Y., carpenter who started the Web shopping site in March 2001, before Google introduced Froogle in December 2002.
But in a separate proceeding in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, Wolfe has challenged Google's attempt to register Froogle as infringement of his Froogles.com mark. And in Wolfe's application to register Froogles.com, a trademark office attorney, like the ICANN panel, determined in March that Froogles.com isn't confusingly similar to any other trademark, including Google.
``Google's right to continue to use the Froogle mark is seriously in question,'' said Wolfe's attorney, Stephen Humphrey. ``To the extent they continue to use the mark, they are infringing on Richard Wolfe's trademark rights,'' Humphrey alleges....
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