Me Against Widgetbucks

Couple days ago I check one of my Widgetbucks referrer and found this “WidgeBucks vs. WidgetBucks?” post. “The folks at WidgetBucks aren’t too happy about another entity taking advantage of its brand and trademark, with director of marketing Dean Jutilla telling me there is no relationship between the two companies. “It is basically a form of cybersquatting,” said Jutilla, adding that they plan to take action against the entity. “It is a total violation. There’s not a lot of gray area,” said Jutilla.”

Then I got an email from Jeff Bergstrom, CFO of MPIRE Corporation, that asked me to give my WIDGEBUCKS.COM to them with some Widgetbucks t-shirts and some other interesting stuff in exchange, lol! Check his email below:

You are the registered owner of widgebucks.com; I am the CFO at Widgetbucks.com in Seattle, Washington.
Unfortunately, your use of the ‘widgebucks’ website is typosquatting and actionable under international law. Typosquatting is a form of cybersquatting which relies on mistakes such as typographical errors made by internet users when inputting a website address into a web browser; should a user accidentally enter an incorrect website address, they are led to an alternative website owned by a cybersquatter. In this case, it is clear that users visiting widgebucks.com do so only after internet users seeking to visit widgetbucks.com commit a typographical error.
Note that WIDGETBUCKS is a registered trademark in the United States (#3489911). Further, your website has numerous links to other sites, including widget.widgebucks.com, which links to a malware website.

I respectfully request that you transfer this website to us right away. If you’ll agree to turn the website over, we’ll send out some Widgetbucks t-shirts and some other interesting stuff – just let me know what size you are and where I should send them; also, I will have one of our technical guys be in touch to manage the transfer.

If you won’t agree to a transfer, we’ll be forced to turn this over to our legal department. I hate lawsuits, and I’m sure you do too – but this is not a close call, and we will file a lawsuit if we must. If we have to file a lawsuit, we will seek to recoup our attorneys fees, costs, and pursue all other remedies that are possible.

In any event, please let me know your intentions by Friday, February 6, 2009. If we don’t hear from you, we’ll reluctantly infer the worst and proceed accordingly.

I hope we can work this out

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