Groovle.com is a website that lets users customize or choose a skin from the site and apply them Google search pages, like this one. Earlier this year, Google mailed a letter to Groovle and requested that the domain Groovle.com be handed over to them. Groovle did not comply. Finally, Google filed a complaint with the National Arbitration Forum (NAF) over the use of Groovle.com because it is confusingly similar to Google.com. The NAF panelists decided that ‘Groovle’ is not a misspelling of Google, mostly because the ‘predominant word’ is intended to be ‘groovy’ or ‘groove’.
An interesting decision, and personally I think it could have gone either way. However, this is a similar outcome to the Froogles.com decision in 2004 when the panel ruled against Google because: ” ….The dissimilar letters in the domain name are sufficiently different to make it distinguishable from Complainant’s mark because the domain name creates an entirely new word and conveys an entirely singular meaning from the mark.” View Complete NAF Decision
