A St. Louis company Bing! Information Design filed suit this week against Microsoft for alleged trademark infringement and unfair competition, over Microsoft’s used of the term “Bing” as its new search engine.
Bing! Information Design is a small, privately held information graphics and multimedia design company and use’s bing.biz at its web address.
The company says it has used the mark “Bing!” since at least 2000 and has applications pending to register the mark.
Bing! Information Design claims that the new search engine’s name causes confusion and dilutes the value of its trademark.
Kevin Kutz, a spokesman for Microsoft, said:
“We believe this suit to be without merit and we do not believe there is any confusion in the marketplace with regard to the complainant’s offerings and Microsoft’s Bing”
“We respect trademarks and other people’s intellectual property, and look forward to the next steps in the judicial process.”
The suit seeks unspecified actual and punitive damages, including having Microsoft pay for corrective advertising to remedy the confusion it allegedly caused.
“For nearly 10 years my client has been using the Bing! mark,” said the attorney representing the St. Louis company.
“My client selected this unique mark to distinguish itself in the marketplace and invested substantial time and effort promoting its business using Bing!. Microsoft’s use of the identical mark and its aggressive advertising have gutted all of my client’s efforts to distinguish its business and created confusion that must be remedied.”
Fortunately for Microsoft none of those quick take down procedures are in place in for WIPO’s or UDRP’s, otherwise who knows, the St. Louis company may have went that route instead of filing suit and A one panel decision might just have awarded the domain Bing.com to the St. Louis Company before Microsoft got any notice or a right to defend itself.
If you want to download a copy of the lawsuit click here.
If one would register bing”something”.com, Microsoft would call you a cybersquatter and come after you, but if they do it it is different.
Well, this time I hope the Bing(.BIZ) corporation wouldn’t let happens Big guys use their name. Apparently they are running small but very successful company, and they exist for quite while. Now Microsoft comes up with search engine called Bing, which is someone else name. Patent is pending, but who had patent, and TM now?
I can bet this game going to finish with a load of money in Bing pocket, but Microsoft will won the case, as they always do, not matter what. We live in the world of Big gambling when comes to the point who did what, when ,and how?
It almost reads like a DomainGang piece of news 😀
By the way, the web site at Bing.biz looks like a slap up job to attempt to claim real content. I smell something fishy here. The domain owner also blocked it from Archive.org
Good point. If a rapid suspension were allowable, Bing.com could have been shut down for weeks because of this. Not a good thing for any business in any circumstance.
There are 104 live trademarks for “bing”. Every one of them could potentially take the search engine down.
Andrew – a common law mark or even a tm does not entitle someone to the .com
It should be clear by now.
The lawsuit sounds rather frivolous in its allegations. I expect Microsoft not to budge at all.
Acro – agreed. That was part of the post. Part of the title was…
“Good Thing For MSFT There Is No Quick Take down Procedure In Place, YET”
I was pointing out how there are 104 trademarks that with URS could potentially stop Bing.com in it’s tracks – with the URS that is. I believe this was along the lines of what Michael initially posted. I agree this is frivolous. I agree no one should be able to shut down Bing.com immediately without court action. And I agree that a common law mark or TM does not entitle someone to the .com.
From the law firm’s web site, under verdicts and settlements, this one is of particular interest:
“Inverizon International, Inc. v. Verizon Communications, Inc.
Confidential Settlement of trademark infringement case where the defendant was accused of “reverse confusion.” The owner of a consulting company had sued Verizon Communications for trademark infringement, claiming that the use of that name confused his customers.”
Note the “confidential settlement” part.
Andrew, I fully agree. And I enjoy The Domains, Michael’s posts attract quality crowd and constructive conversations 🙂
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when the rumored name for the MS engine was “kumo” I’ve always suggested in my blog [ http://newgoos.blogspot.com/ ] to (simply) use the well know name and website Microsoft.com for it
of course, MS managers don’t read my blog… 🙂 …so, now they have a low SE market share and are sued by Bing.biz
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Definitely doesn’t look like anything Microsoft has to worry about. I found paragraph 35 amusing, where it says “Microsoft’s conduct was outrageous due to its evil motive……” Evil motive? That sounds like something out of a novel, not a legal pleading in the real world.
On the bright side, Microsoft will provide legitimate registrants, assuming they win, with a nice template on how to defend cases like this.
There are no David’s in the Goliath Microsoft world.
Bing! will lose their collective shirts and will pay Microsoft for infringing on the MS Bing TM for the past ten years.
I wish i was the guys that own bing.biz, bcos playing with the big boys will make you big outo!
Well this the hour google as been waiting for to save thier neck from microsoft bra bra.
why did the complaintant skip udrp and go straight to court? Probably because you can get a settlement in court.
It would have been awesome though if the complaintant started with a udrp and won. All things being equal, odds are they could have won udrp.
Do you really think Microsoft’s Bing.com could get taken out by a URS? Get real.
Their lawyers would be in court to stop the URS request faster than you can say “bing”
This applies to any large company or site.
Russ
Can you go to court to stop a URS from happening?
Where do you get that from?
They should be thanking MS…they have prolly got more leads now than in the past 10 yrs combined
Bing.ro (2003) a webdesign comp in Romania. What they have to do? Any opinions?
TM infringement is only applied to names that have a similar product. If bing.biz was a search engine, then MS might have something to worry about. However it some graphic design site that is just phishing for a settlement. There is no brand confusion, thus no TM infringement.
Now bing is a generic word, and Microsoft WILL be suing you if you own say bing*anything*.com – Which I think is bullocks because they are a search engine thus claiming anything can be related to BING and since they are MSFT you will instantly lose your domain. But of course since the law of domains are governed by corporations, evil, and money — parking a domain is considered “bad-faith” and half the nut-jobs on these blogs and forums agree w/ that, so I guess don’t park any domain w/ “bing” in it.
When are the lawsuits going to end? Why is everything translatable to $$$? If you fall on wet floor, that somehow = money for you. If you burn yourself w/ hot-coffee then you should get lots of money… There should be a law, if you lose a lawsuit against somebody you should have to pay the amount you are suing for. This to me makes perfect sense.
There are actually less than ten registered trademarks for the word mark “Bing”, not 104. The other 95 or so have multiple words. Also, of these word marks, a few are clearly dissimilar goods.
Just ranted about the infringement suit on my blog – I don’t think anyone sees Microsoft suffering much from this but there are complexities to the case that should make it interesting.
The distinction here is less clear, and it may be reasonable to consider one company diverging into the other’s market. Both trademarks specify online advertising activity as part of the business.
Even if they are considered dissimilar the priority mark would win all other factors equal – pretty clear MS has clarity and a much stronger mark.
All this free publicity is a sure motive though.