AP: Google's Challenge of 'Froogles' Rejected

A three-judge arbitration panel ruled that Google's challenge to the 2001 issuance of the Froogles.com domain name didn't have any merit. Google complained that the Froogles.com brand name was too close to its own. The issue takes on great importance because Google later adopted the Froogle name for its comparison shopping site.

If Froogles.com's original claim to its name stands, it probably spells disaster for Google's continued use of the Froogle brand name, unless it takes a decidedly more friendly strategy toward Froogles.com owner Richard Wolfe, a New York carpenter who started up his site almost two years before Google introduced its own Froogle service.

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) decided in March that Froogles.com was not confusingly similar to Google or any other trade name. Wolfe's lawyer pointed out that the combined effect of the two decisions puts Google's right to the use of Froogle "seriously in question." Wolfe has filed a challenge with the PTO to prevent Google from registering Froogle as a trademark of its own.