Citrix Being Sued

It has filed a suit in the Northern District Court of California claiming trademark infringement, cybersquatting and unfair competition thanks to Citrix buying a number of domain names virtually identical to WebEx's latest service.
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It's been a long while since we've seen a company-on-company cybersquatting challenge - the corporate world has learned to pretty much to steer clear of each others' trademarks online. But WebEx appears keen to make the most of it.

It's an open-and-shut case. WebEx launched a remote access service on 24 January that it called MyWebExPC, and to tie in with it, it registered and launched a website at, yep, www.mywebexpc.com. The very same day, a quick-thinking Citrix exec, Brent LaSala, started checking out other similar domain names to see if WebEx had picked them up.

When he found they hadn't, he mischievously bought them. And what a lot there are: webexpc.com, mypcwebex.com, mypcwebx.com, my-webex-pc.com, mywebexpcfree.com, mywebxpcfree.com, mywebexpro.com, mywebxpro.com, mywebexpcpro.com and mywebxpcpro.com.

LaSala is the main man at Citrix dealing with the company's own version of WebEx's new service, called GoToMyPC (actually, Citrix bought the technology with its acquisition of ExpertCity in December 2003 for $225m).

WebEx, understandably, is not very pleased with this turn of events and has decided to sue Citrix claiming trademark infringement and alleging that the purchases were "an attempt to illegally divert potential customers" - which would give it grounds for requesting a fine.

Fortunately, LaSala has also been clever enough not to actually put anything up on any of the domains, so WebEx claims that Citrix is stealing customers fall flat on their face. If WebEx advertises its service's new website and people can't recall it, that's one thing. But if they type it in wrong, and get nothing either, that's hardly justification for suing the domain owner.

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