14 DAY TRIAL // Knowing all too well what Yahoo does "for a living", it was a bit surprising to hear that it also provides food to people. After the initial confusion running through my mind I took a better look at the spelling and that cleared it up: not Yahoo! the famous Internet-based company does the cooking, but Ya-Hoo!, the Sherman, Texas based bakery does.
Not surprisingly, there's been some suing between the two that finally settled under good terms, Yahoo! giving in to the baking company's previous registering of its brand name and type of writing. Despite being there for ages, Barry Schwartz of searchengineland.com wrote an article on it just now and that reminded me the of the story.
As you must have noticed by now, the only difference between the two is the hyphen separating "Ya" and "Hoo" and the "H" being written in capital letters. Oh, that and the fact that the bakery has been in business since 1944, roughly 50 years longer than Yahoo! has.
The litigation between the two was suddenly ended under amiable terms when in 1997 the settlement must have been extremely favorable to Ya-Hoo! if it dropped the federal suit bound to be a sure winner. Perhaps connected to it, perhaps not, the announcement about the ceasing of "hostilities" between the two also had Michael Thompson, the baking company controller, announce that it had a new web site, carrying a disclaimer: "Not affiliated with Yahoo! Inc. - the Internet search engine company."
Some advertising through Yahoo!'s network must have also been included in the deal that started just a few days before the official announcement given by Thompson and a spokeswoman from the Sunnyvale based company.
At the time, it was an example of the ever growing battle over trademark names on the Internet that had kicked off a couple of years earlier.
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