AltaVista.com just became the most expensive world wide web domain in history, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. Compaq Computer Corp has reportedly paid Jack Marshall $3.35m for the AltaVista domain name. Ever since Digital Equipment Corp launched its powerful search engine in December 1995, AltaVista.com has been causing no end of confusion. DEC did know of AltaVista Technologies Inc, a Campbell, California-based multimedia firm (CI No 3,024) at the time, but with a lack of foresight some say characterized the last days of the Unix pioneer, executives chose to license the name rather than buying it outright. The result: two and a half years of clueless newbies and unobservant web indices linking to the wrong AltaVista. ATI was quick to capitalize on the confusion, putting up a copycat search engine at www.altavista.com. In March 1997, DEC won an injunction preventing ATI from using the trademark in a misleading way. Since then ATI has had to post a disclaimer on every page and provide links to DEC’s AltaVista at altavista.digital.com. This was an acceptable enough compromise from DEC’s point of view, but it is obviously less than optimal for DEC’s new parent, Compaq. In the manner of Eastern European despots, Compaq seems to be quietly erasing its acquisition’s name from the historical record. Longtime industry observers chuckled at recent boasts over the performance of Compaq’s Alpha microprocessor. But Compaq’s brand consolidation has paid off for Marshall, ATI’s founder. Although such domain name purchases are not unknown, trafficking in trademarks is frowned upon in most countries, as two UK ‘cybersquatters’ have just found to their cost (see separate story).
