The Booble site, which uses a similar logo, style and layout as the top search engine, searches only a group of porn web sites. Within eight days of its launch, Booble had received a "cease and desist" warning from Google's Trademark Enforcement Team:
"Your use of the Domain Name and corresponding web site constitutes trademark infringement and dilution of Google's trademarks and unfair competition under federal and state laws."
First reported on WebProWorld, the e-mail notice disputed the claim that Booble is a parody site – which would be protected under US intellectual property laws.
Google's e-mail argued:
"For a work to constitute a parody, it must use some elements of a prior author's composition to create a new one that, at least in part, comments on the original authors works."
According to the Trademark Team:
"Your web site does not comment on the Google web site at all; it merely uses the Google look and feel and a similar name for a search engine."
Google demanded that the web site be taken down, the domain name be transferred to Google and that Guywire Inc., the company behind Booble, "immediately and permanently cease and desist from using the Google trade dress."
Booble was quick to respond. The response from Guywire's lawyers argued:
"Our client's web site is in fact a successful parody, which simultaneously brings to mind the original, while also conveying that it is not the original."
The lawyers denied that the Booble site could be confused with the popular search engine and asked that "Google reconsider its objections and accept the Booble web site in the spirit that it was intended – as a parody".
The anonymous founder of Booble – reported to be a former executive of one of America's leading on-line companies – retorted: "If we weren't commenting [on] Google's logo and functionality, and the way men use the web, we wouldn't be hearing from them now."
He added, "The entire universe gets the joke. Only a lawyer could say 'Booble' without smiling," and vowed, "We have just begun to fight for our right to parody."