I saw an ad in the Philippine Daily Inquirer yesterday that more or less pissed the hell out of me. It was for “the country’s first mobile instant messenger”, Yehba. Yeah, you read that right, YEHBA. I dunno if they unknowingly picked that name, I don’t care, it’s too close to mine in pronunciation. Alleba has been around since 2001, so they can’t claim that they thought of it first.
It’s no secret that Alleba is pronounced a-yeh-bah (yes, double L’s (LL) take on the letter Y). I might not be that famous but even so these guys couldn’t be more blatant. I worked hard on my brand and I continue to do so. I’ll have to talk to some people to see what actions I must take to protect it.
yeah drue, Yehba and Alleba (with the correct pronunciation) sound very close to each other. i believe you should take action, or else you’ll lose the name-recall game.
Only found out now that your site is not pronounced a-leh-ba… Anyway, looks like the ayeba and ayehba dot com domain names have not yet been registered.
manuelv does have a point there: that’s one action you can take.
at any rate, it might be wise to get the opinion of legal experts on the matter. thing is, we have so few of them who are IT-savvy or IT-issues-aware as well….
do some SEO .. optimizing keyword yehba to this blog. hahaha!
man, that just sucks. maybe talking them into getting featured for a news short might became a win-win deal for the both of you – for exposure’s sake.
It sounds like Yehey + Alleba :p
Yay, no! not another messenger 😀
Using names that sound the same but are different in meaning or different in their context of use is not a conflict. In order for there to be a conflict the name and context in which they are used would both have to be similar, and be perceived to create confusion amoung consumers.
JT
So John, if I register Llahoo.com and make it an instant messenger, do you honestly think Yahoo! wouldn’t sue me?
I know you didn’t come here by accident, but I appreciate your comment.