Tech Town, NC

Lulu.com, the successful self publishing services company based just down the road in Morrisville, NC, is suing the NBC-News Corp. joint venture “Hulu” for trademark infringement. The complaint alleges that the use of the similarly spelled domain qualifies as “unfair and deceptive trade practices and for federal cyberpiracy.” Harsh words.

This is NOT a smooth start for Hulu and its parents, News Corp. and NBC. After being widely ridiculed in tech circles as “Clown Co.”, most notably by Mike Arrington, it would be a major embarrassment to have to give up the name they so desperately needed.

Lulu, though, claims it would be only fair. “We have spent more than five years and tens of millions of dollars in investment successfully building the Lulu brand…” said Lulu CEO Bob Young.

Many people know Lulu only as a new age vanity press, but the real meat of this lawsuit comes from the fact that Lulu Enterprises also owns the domain Lulu.tv, a video portal. Lulu has been using Lulu.tv for over a year to market self published videos, and even make them available as DVDs. I’d say they’re solidly in the internet video sector, making this lawsuit a serious threat to those focus-group dollars spent by NBC and News Corp.

Curiously, Lulu is bidding on the rights to rename a HUMAN BEING after their company. They really are serious about this brand building aren’t they? It makes me wonder if this suit isn’t another (unfortunately effective) way to grab headlines. According to Lulu’s site, the misguided soul is “Stan Oleynick, a 23-year-old Web designer and developer from Sacramento, Calif.”

With unique domains tough to come by, I’m not sure what I think of this holding up against the “consumer confusion” threshold. I can tell the difference between Hulu and Lulu just like I know the difference between ABC and NBC (but then, I am quite sharp) What do you think? Would you be confused? (See related poll in sidebar please)

You can read the full press release over at Mashable.