Google has filed 64 domain name disputes with the National Arbitration Forum since 2001. It has won 62 times, arguing that the names in question were confusingly similar to its own. But on Christmas Eve, Google suffered its second loss in eight years as the arbiters decided that groovle.com was not similar enough to Google's name and that it had not been registered in bad faith.

This, despite the fact that groovle.com offers a "groovy custom search homepage."

Objecting to Google's trademark filings

Most of the disputes involve obvious uses of Google's name or of its product names. Examples include:

youtubeislam.com

googlemenu.com

googledataentry.com

googlevideo.com (registered by one "Smith Smithers" from Beverly Hills, CA)

wwwyoutube.com

youtubes.com

adsence.com

googl.com

googlecheckout.com

googlegameroom.com

googlr.com

googlesex.info

sexogoogle.com

googleporno.com

You get the idea.

The National Arbitration Forum is certified by ICANN to decide domain disputes; when Google wins, the domain at issue is transferred to the company's control. One side effect of this policy is that, whenever Google decides to truly index all of the world's information, the "sexogoogle.com" domain name is already in the company's control.

Google last lost a dispute back in 2004 when it went after a man named Richard Wolfe for froogles.com. In that case, Wolfe had registered froogles.com back in 2000 and had set up a "frugal" shopping site there that earned commissions from the 700 retailers linked to on the site's 400 product pages.

The disputed Froogles.com

Wolfe told the arbiters that he had chosen the site because the actual word "frugal" was not available and because froogles.com "has a nice 'ring' to it, and because the 's' on the end of the word reminds him of well-known department stores."

When Google (later) launched its froogle.com shopping engine and filed for a trademark on the term in 2003, Wolfe filed a Notice of Opposition on the grounds that he was already using the froogles.com term. During arbitration, Wolfe said that Google's legal team was shaking him down.

"Google’s filing of its Complaint in this action is an apparent effort to coerce Mr. Wolfe into withdrawing his opposition to Google’s application in the PTO," said the decision. "Indeed, in an e-mail dated May 11, 2004, Google's counsel represented that if Mr. Wolfe would withdraw his opposition to Google’s application to register its mark FROOGLE, then Google would not object to Mr. Wolfe continuing to operate his website at <froogles.com>. Google made it quite clear in its e-mail that if Mr. Wolfe refused, Google would initiate proceedings to have his domain name taken from him and transferred to Google."

When Wolfe refused to withdraw his opposition, Google tried to seize the froogles.com domain name on the grounds that it was too close to "Google."

In a split decision, the arbitration panel sided with Wolfe, noting that he was running an actual business at the site, that the site had bern around for four years already, and that "the dissimilar letters in the domain name are sufficiently different to make it distinguishable from Complainant’s mark because the domain name creates an entirely new word and conveys an entirely singular meaning from the mark."

Enter Groovle

When Groovle.com ended up in the crosshair of Google's legal eagles this year, the outcome looked grim, but the young Canadians behind the domain claimed that their case was far more similar to the froogles.com case than to something like adsence.com. Yes, they run a search engine interface on the site, but the team says that "Groovle" is no play on "Google."

A custom Groovle interface to Google

"There is no misspelling of GOOGLE involved. The Disputed Domain Name contains an important 'R' and important 'V' that serve to distinguish the sound, appearance, meaning, and connotation of GROOVLE from GOOGLE. The addition of the 'R' and the 'V' clearly make the predominant word and meaning 'GROOVE' or 'GROOVY' rather than GOOGLE."

In a brief, unanimous Christmas Eve decision, the three arbiters on the panel agreed. Groovle's Christmas present? Keeping its own domain name.