The suit is just plain silly. It’s clear that Utube had real damage as a result of Youtube, intentional or not, and Google could have made this all go away for a few bucks.

See the website screen capture below. All they have done is to put up a banner to cover the costs of clueless people who can’t type in a web site correctly.

A screen shot of Utube:

YouTube – uTube showdown stays alive in federal court

A website by any other name
By Kevin Fayle in San Francisco
Published Tuesday 12th June 2007 22:14 GMT

Silicon Justice What’s in a name, right?

For the Universal Tube & Rollform Equipment Corporation, operator of uTube.com, its domain name means cash – and with a federal court’s recent refusal to dismiss the company’s suit against YouTube, the possibility of even more cash in the future.

The company has operated uTube.com as a means to sell used pipe and tube mills and rollform machinery since 1996. After YouTube’s launch in 2005, the sleepy little Ohio website went from around 1,500 visitors a month to roughly 70,000 per day. The company alleges that this caused its web host’s servers to crash, which disrupted its business and sullied its reputation. It also claims that bandwidth overages bumped its hosting fees from $100 a month to $2,500.

In true Midwestern fashion, the company made the best of a bad situation by adding a ringtone search engine to the site, as well as links to dating, insurance and gambling sites. These new features now pull in $1,000 a day or more, according to one report.

In addition to capitalizing on the name confusion by hawking Internet crap, uTube has also sued YouTube in federal court. The company has asked for monetary damages, as well as injunctions to stop YouTube’s operation and for the court to transfer the YouTube.com domain to uTube.

The judge hearing the case just dismissed a number of uTube’s complaints, but also refused to grant YouTube’s motion to dismiss the entire suit. The judge also gave uTube permission to amend its complaint to see if it can revive any of the dismissed causes of action.

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