German city threatens to sue holder of its Twitter name
by Mike Butcher
on January 22, 2010

Be careful, you guys who’ve taken town or city names as Twitter handles. As we know, Twitter accounts are now being treated like domain names. And one guy in Germany is about to test the law on this.

Mark Zondler registered http://twitter.com/mannheim in 2007 as his tech company Mikogo, a desktop sharing tool, is based in the town of that name, namely, Mannheim, Germany.

However, the City elders of Mannheim now say he must give up the account or be dragged through the courts.

Mikogo is not giving up however. It registered the account fair and square and, as it points out in a post, the city could easily get something like “city_mannheim”. (Then again, the more press this gets the less likely it will. Backfire anyone?)

Mikogo has until February 10th to hand over the name.

I for one can’t wait for this face-off.

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  • http://onlyjames.com/ James Mowery

    I can only sum that up into one word (no really): Unbelievable.

  • liam

    Just like recent domain name UDRP cases , geographic regions are not subject to trademark protection ….
    http://www.elliotsblog.com/geographic-names-are-not-subject-to-trademark-protection-09122

  • Marcelo Ramos

    Politicians are the same anywhere.

  • http://www.vb.v77x.com youssef

    ufger

  • http://www.kirstenwinkler.com Kirsten Winkler

    First of all: who cares what Mannheim (the city) would tweet? There is nothing interesting.

    Secondly Twitter is not a German service, the case they are referring to in the letter is about a .de domain, not .com.

    I doubt that they have a case here. Hopefully this will get viral and the guys at Mannheim see some effects of Twitter and Social Media, don’t think they can handle it :) .

  • will

    politicians eh?

    at some point would someone politely remind them that they serve the people not t’other way round

  • http://david-noel.com/ David

    Bring it on!

  • Esu

    Mark will certainly be getting all the publicity and exposure he needs for his MIKOGO. Lucky Guy !!!!!I thought it was only in the UK that politicians were daft – Seems the twits are everywhere, showing their ignorance.

    I hope whoever in the name of Mannheim is instigating this court case, does so with his/her own funds at not at the expense of their taxpayers …… Otherwise I’ll consider suing that City official for blatant stupidity and incompetence. I can also bet that whoever came up with this idea is hardly armed with the facts and has possibly gotten his ‘knowledge’ off the tabloids.

    Meanwhile Mark, I’d never heard of MIKOGO before but I guess I’ll have to go find out now. Maybe idiots do have their uses, rarely but sometimes !!!! I’m behind you all the way ….. those politico idiots should keep their ignorance within City Hall or wherever it is they crawl out from.

  • Ken Aston

    Choosing http://twitter.com/mannheim for a company just because it’s a Mannheim? Doesn’t make much sense to me.

  • http://secondflush.de/marketing/herdecke-die-heimat-auf-twitter/ /Herdecke – Die Heimat auf Twitter | secondflush

    [...] Marketing [Translate] Vor einigen Tagen hat mich einer der Mitautoren dieser Seite auf einen Artikel auf Techcrunch Europe hingewesen. Der Blog berichtete über einen Fall aus Mannheim. Die Gründer des Unternehmens Mikogo [...]

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  • http://angelapearls.com/about angela

    now that is just stupid

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