Aimster founder Johnny Deep has said publicly that the name of his service derives from the nickname for Aimee — supposedly the woman pictured on the site’s home page. Never mind that the service taps into AIM (AOL’s Instant Messenger Service) to enable Napster-like services; the Aimster name is just a coincidence. Get it?
The National Arbitration Forum wasn’t buying it. Arbitrators ruled 2-to-1 that Aimster was essentially cyber-squatting, using AOL’s registered trademark to imply a connection between the services and “lure” unsuspecting users to the site, according to Computer User‘s Steven Bonisteel. The ruling requires Deep to give up the “Aimster.com” domain name, along with a few others, even though the dissenting arbitrator, G. Gervaise Davis, pointed out that AOL didn’t register AIM as a trademark until seven months after Aimster.com was registered. Deep called the decision “a horrendous error.”
