Google, Yahoo! Sued Over Their Names

Rob Williams

Editor-in-Chief
Staff member
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From our front-page news:
Who saw this one coming? According to TechDirt, a man is being detained in Houston claims that both Google and Yahoo! stole their names from Tanzanian tribes, which go by Gogo and Yao. He's asking that both companies award $10,000 to each member of the tribes, going back three generations. Will this lawsuit go anywhere? Probably not, but it's humorous regardless. At this point though, I am really hoping that there are no Tec Ga tribes out there anywhere.

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Not that the guy doesn't try: "The court is now been asked to answer a common sense question: Is "Google" much more related, semantically and lexically, with "Gogo" or with "Googol"?" Once again, the chance of this lawsuit getting anywhere is basically nil (even if they had taken their names from the tribes, which they clearly did not), but as Goldman points out to us: "There is, of course, a serious problem here about the courts getting clogged up with lawsuits brought by prisoners/detainees with too much time on their hands and nothing to do but file lawsuits, and companies having to spend money to stomp out these lawsuits."

Source: TechDirt
 

GameMasterNick

Coastermaker
Eh, in the English language (which applies to the copyright laws in California) both of the terms are really too generic to actually copyright. Google being a number and Yahoo! had to add the ! to the end just to get it cleared. Honestly, I'm not sure how Google can maintain their copyright, come to think of it, they must be going under the assumption that a google is not a commonly used word. Amazon won with that arguement. *shrugs* /babble
 
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