MyWindowsClub.com and the domain dispute with Microsoft

National Arbitration Forum has dismissed Microsoft's UDRP complaint against my company (SpiderWorks Technologies Pvt Ltd, India) based on a joint request by me and Microsoft. According to the agreement reached by both the parties, I will retain my primary website/domain MyWindowsClub.com and I have handed over the rest of the unused domains that contain Microsoft trademarks (domains like Windows8Laptops.com) to Microsoft, which I had reserved for future use.

Last 12 weeks were very stressful, spending most of my time gathering evidence to support my case, responding to legal notices, preparing documents to deal with the domain dispute, negotiating with the complainant with the help of cyber lawyers and also moving my websites to new domains in case all my strategies fail.

I felt very proud after collecting all the supporting information that gave me lot of confidence to fight back with Microsoft. I had full confidence that Microsoft will not win this case if they choose to proceed with the domain dispute on MyWindowsClub.com.

Interestingly, the evidence I collected during last 12 weeks include domain names registered by Microsoft that contain trademarks of other companies! Another interesting bit I learnt was, I could get a stay order from any local court in India and retain the domain name in my name until Microsoft get all the stay orders cleared. So, it is not just the domain dispute with UDRP but there are several steps a company has to go through before they can snatch a domain name from someone accusing trademark infringement.

Finally, Microsoft has given up their claim on the domain "MyWindowsClub.com" and the battle has come to a happy end.

Thanks a lot to the former South Asia MVP Lead at Microsoft for his efforts to resolve this dispute with Microsoft amicably. I really appreciate the sincere efforts by him to reach out to Microsoft and attempt to resolve this issue. He once again proved he cares for the people who were part of his MVP team.

My next thanks goes to Sujith Kumar who showed up from no where, made a phone call to me and introduced me to Mr. Eswaramangalam.

And a big thanks to Mr. Esahaque Eswaramangalam, Chairman of Cyber Unicorn, who advised me to go and fight the case through Indian legal system no matter how big the other party is. I never knew an Indian court has control over the cyberspace when it comes to cases like this. He gave me the courage to go ahead and fight for justice.

Also, I thank the cyber lawyers (Perry4Law - first and exclusive Techno-Legal Firm in India) who represented my company and helped us to reach an agreement with Microsoft without losing what is really important for me in my career as a Professional Blogger.

Also, I thank the lawyers and domain department at Microsoft who cooperated and agreed for an amicable solution without dragging this in to a long, time consuming legal issue. I am glad Microsoft recognized the value of my hardwork behind the success of MyWindowsClub.com.

And at the end, I have decided not to use the domain www.MyWindowsClub.com any more (even though I retain all the rights to keep and use it) and have decided to continue with our new domain - http://www.Techulator.com.

We are opening the windows to a bigger and better world instead of just looking at Microsoft Windows! We will continue to cover Microsoft Windows in our new domain along with many other topics like Android, iOS and more...

Catch me at Facebook if you have any questions: http://www.facebook.com/tonymjohn