Google Loses Lawsuit Against Froogles.com

Google Inc.'s right to use the name
``Froogle'' for its online shopping service came into question Friday
when an arbitration panel rejected the company's challenge of a Web
site named Froogles.com.

Two of the three judges on the panel of the Internet Corporation for
Assigned Names and Numbers, or ICANN, rejected Google's argument that
Froogles.com was ``confusingly similar'' to Google.

``The dissimilar letters in the domain name are sufficiently
different to make it distinguishable from Google's mark,'' the panel
found. The name Froogles.com ``creates an entirely new word and conveys
an entirely singular meaning from the mark.''

The search-engine company's loss has no immediate impact on its use
of the name Froogle. But it means that the Froogles.com name will
remain with Richard Wolfe, a disabled Holtsville, N.Y., carpenter who
started the Web shopping site in March 2001, before Google introduced
Froogle in December 2002.

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