YouTube vs. UTube

This action has been filed by uTube, to stop the violation of its lega rights by Defendant YouTube, Inc., whose illegal acts have resulted in the direction of millions of nuisance internet visitors to the Plaintiff's website. Plaintiff has used the internet domain name [utube.com] since 1996 for its business of selling used tube and pipe mills and rollform machinery.

Due to confusion in the minds of consumers, the spillover of nuisance traffic to Plaintiff's neighboring website at [utube.com] has destroyed the value of Plaintiff's trademark and internet property, repeatedly caused the shut down of Plaintiff's website, increased Plaintiff's internet costs by thousands of dollars a month, and damaged the Plaintiff's good reputation. Plaintiff seeks preliminary and permanent Injunctions, the transfer of the [youtube.com] domain to Plaintiff, damages, costs and attorneys' fees as authorized by the Lanham Act and Ohio Law.

"The site has installed a ring tone search engine and lists scores of cell phone ring tones atop its highly trafficked page," reports Red Herring’s Scott Martin. "People can find Shakira and Britney Spears ring tones along with links for gambling, concerts, and dating." Not to mention Nissan cars, Tai Chi, and Louis Vuitton. That’s a pretty far cry from the aforementioned rollformers (although I’ve heard the 8 Stand x 2 x 10” Dahlstrom #550-8 is popular with some young people). But Red Herring quoted Baris Karadogan, who wrote, "[F]rom what I hear, that is generating them north of $1000/day. That’s $360K straight to the bottom line, at 10% pretax that’s like finding $4M of revenue all of a sudden. That’s luck." Mr. Girkins may not entirely agree - he's apparently still pursuing a lawsuit filed against YouTube when this all first started. It almost seems as if the problem has taken on a life of its own, as Mr. Girkins said the new search engine "more than covers costs for hosting. But we have a lot of attorney costs, too."