Prompt's TechBlog

Now Youtube's rich, everyone wants a piece of it. The strangest lawsuit has been brought by Universal Tube & Rollform Equipment, utube.com, who probably won't thank me for that link. They're struggling to cope with the unwanted traffic they're getting as a result of Youtube's fame. And since they sell industrial equipment, it's probably not bringing them any decent leads either. As these things usually are, it's been billed as a 'David vs Goliath' battle.

The most obvious option here is for the manufacturer to sell its domain to Youtube. All those people looking for the video site at utube.com would be able to find it, and Universal Tube & Rollform Equipment will be able to recreate its site elsewhere. It shouldn't be too hard for them to move their site to a new domain and rebuild the incoming links, particularly if Youtube gives them a few quid to do it. The utube.com site only has a Google PageRank of 4, although that's likely to increase significantly with all the media coverage the legal battle's getting.

Reuters reports, though, that plucky David has turned down an offer of $1 million from Goliath. He's reportedly holding out for $3m. That might seem greedy, but this week the market value for Cameras.com was set at $1.5m and utube already has plenty of relevant traffic.

An alternative approach would be for David to retain control of the site, but do something more creative with the traffic utube.com is getting. With the site reportedly getting 68 million hits in August (whatever 'hits' might mean), a few adverts and special offers would soon make the site profitable to operate. Customers looking for Universal Tube & Rollform Equipment could be redirected with a prominent banner at the top. If David's feeling generous, he could even link to Goliath's lair. The problem with this approach is that Universal Tube & Rollform Equipment might expose itself to claims of passing off or trading on youtube's reputation. The itunes.co.uk domain was handed over to Apple in March 2005, even though it had been innocently registered in 2000, long before Apple's iTunes products existed. Apple won in part because the domain was being used to promote Napster and was declared to be an abusive registration. Different rules might apply in the US, but we're guessing the power is still with big brands.

Unwanted traffic is not a new thing: In 2000, Penguin published a book called 'Katie.com' about child abuse, which had nothing to do with the owner of that domain name. Penguin eventually republished, using a different name.

Somehow, I can't see youtube rebranding, though.