Brand Marketing

A couple years ago, I blogged about the company called Xoom, a money transfer service with a name that I think is pretty bad. It sounds like “zoom,” and is spelled differently. I didn’t and still don’t understand why a company would choose to have a confusing brand name.

It was even more surprising to me a few months ago when Motorola announced that it’s  tablet computer was going to be called Xoom (which went on sale today).  This was a head scratcher to me because “Xoom” seems like a made up term rather than a descriptive term.  I also can’t understand why a big company like Motorola couldn’t think of a better name and/or why they would take a risk of potentially infringing on another company’s brand name.

As you might expect, this has turned litigious. According to an article on Bloomberg this morning, the money transfer company has sued Motorola for trademark infringement. The case was filed in US District Court, Northern District of California (San Francisco).

The National Football League’s Players Association (NFLPA) is gearing up for a potential lockout as their dispute with NFL owners continues, and it appears that they’re taking it to the public. The NFLPA owns and is using NFLLockout.com.

The domain name was originally created in September of 2009 by someone who appears to be unrelated to the NFLPA, but the Players Association appears to have taken possession of the domain name in or around  March of 2010. Although it’s privately registered right now, it was recently registered to Richard Persons, the player union’s director of information services.

As a football fan, it’s interesting to see the NFLPA take this battle to the public in this manner. As much as I am a fan (big PATS fan), it’s difficult to take sides in a contract dispute with the mostly wealthy players and the even more wealthy owners.

I can commiserate with the players though. They may make a lot of money, but most only have a few years to play professional football, are battered on the field, and most get huge amounts of money right out of college, and I can only imagine how quickly my money would be spent if I was in that spot.

It is interesting to see the NFLPA use the NFL trademark in a domain name like this.

** Update**

Andrew previously reported that the former owner sold the domain name to the NFLPA for $25,000.