Filching the Internet’s Good Name

For all the problems it solves, the digital age also confuses the age-old question: What’s in a name? Take the case of Cal State Northridge student Daniel Khoshnood, whose handiness with a mouse enabled him to open his own business at the age of 21. Problem: He filched the good name of Microsoft Corp. to promote his start-up Web design shop.

The tactic is becoming fairly common on the World Wide Web as companies scramble to make a buck off mouse-clicking netizens. Khoshnood registered his Web site’s name as microsoftnetwork.com. The idea: to trick people into visiting his site, where they would then learn all about his company. Microsoft was not amused. Nor are other companies that find that their trademarked names have already been snatched up. A burger chain fought to get its trademark carlsjr.com away from a photographer who refused to relinquish it. Khoshnood’s intent wasn’t to hold the name hostage. He just wanted to benefit from Microsoft’s name recognition, but expects to give up the moniker.

The problem is that trademark law has yet to catch up with technology. Companies in different lines of business can share a name, but it’s impossible to split an Internet domain. As it stands, firms with registered trademarks generally can reclaim a domain snatched by someone who’s taken their name. In cases like Khoshnood’s shadow Microsoft Network, favoring trademark holders is clearly smart. The danger arises when a trademarked name happens to match a Web operator’s real name. If companies are favored consistently in those cases, the very foundations of the Internet are threatened. It becomes less a marketplace of ideas and more a bland digital shopping mall.