They actually are quite similar words, for companies which it seems are engaged in the exact same business.
I can easily imagine how someone, not familiar with either company, might hear of Moz and, later, mistakenly believe that the company they heard about was Doz (or vice versa).
Don't forget, trademark law is such that you have to protect your trademark or you lose it. If there's any risk at all of infringement, you have to go after it. So although the case that Moz and Doz are similar isn't particularly strong, it seems close enough that I'm not surprised Moz is taking this action.
While SeoMoz was promoting Marketing Analytics on this domain name there was nothing about moving all of their services to it. It seems to me that Doz has a reasonable chance (25% maybe) against the giant Moz. I would fight it! There is no way the DOZ guy could predict a domain name shift for Seomoz.com. I visit Woz.com occasionally to see what Woz is up to. I rarely search DMoz.com anymore. I would fight the Moz trademark if there is one... it is too common.
Is moz a person (Woz), a Browser?, a Metal Laminates and Architectural Products company, do they sell MOZ Luxury Wheels?, a songwriter? http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Moz, finance.yahoo.com/q?s=MOZ.TO, do they sell sweaters? viva-moz.com, is it a cafe? moz-cafe, another person Middelton-Moz Institute?, does it have to do with orphans? projectmoz.com. That is just 2 pages on Google.
According to another comment (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5800161), Sarah Bird notified Doz of the issue way back in January. So yes I think Doz could indeed predict that SEOmoz was going to become Moz.
In January their website still had "Marketing Analytics" as the featured item that was coming soon. The poor Doz guy still had no idea what was going on and thought it was different enough. Her warning wasn't very specific and he thought he was in good shape. This is really a bait and switch on him.
How is this bait and switch? The COO of SEOmoz told them that they were going to have a conflict. Now they have a conflict. It seems like it's exactly what was advertised on the packaging.
1. Capseo bought DOZ.com back in April 2011 and Capseo has been selling Online Marketing since September 2009. So it was just a matter of time that we launch DOZ.com.
2. We didn’t fill in December 2012 as you said, but March 12, 2012. (cf. USPTO)
Only in that they both end with "oz" and sound nothing alike, don't share any common meaning, and have no other obvious connection. Personally, I don't see how anybody could ever confuse those two words.
Don't forget, trademark law is such that you have to protect your trademark or you lose it. If there's any risk at all of infringement, you have to go after it.
"any" risk? OK, great, there is a slight, however improbable, risk that somebody could confuse "Fogbeam" and "Moz". After all, we both do something related to computers and both words do contain an "o". So maybe Moz should attack us next?
Only in that they both end with "oz" and sound nothing alike, don't share any common meaning, and have no other obvious connection. Personally, I don't see how anybody could ever confuse those two words.
Right, because everybody has perfect memory of everything they've heard in the past. No wait, it's actually quite the opposite. People have crappy memory, especially for things they're not already familiar with. Neither word has any meaning to an English speaker, but they sounds very similar. I can easily imagine how someone might get confused.
If someone else launched a company "Fogdeam", which sold similar software to yours, surely you'd go after them.
If someone else launched a company "Fogdeam", which sold similar software to yours, surely you'd go after them.
I don't know for sure that we would. But I'd argue that, being a longer word, you get more confusion with the one character change, since any one character changes a smaller percentage of the overall word.
The position of the character definitely matters to. For example, in your "fogdeam" case, I'd say it's iffy. But if somebody launched Dogbeam, I doubt the thought of going after them would even enter my mind. This is all, of course, assuming that they didn't also use a similar logo and similar messaging, etc.
Out of curiousity, what if they did the same thing as you, or a very similar thing? If you serve scientists with lasers (how Austin Powers of you), and they serve scientists with lasers, what would you do?
Ya know, it's hard to say without actually being in that exact situation. I won't say we would never invoke trademark law, but I will just say that - in general - I don't agree with trying to treat trademarks as overly broad.
Maybe the "Moz" / "Doz" one is a little bit more of a grey area than I see it, I don't know... I'm biased towards a certain mindset here.
I can easily imagine how someone, not familiar with either company, might hear of Moz and, later, mistakenly believe that the company they heard about was Doz (or vice versa).
Don't forget, trademark law is such that you have to protect your trademark or you lose it. If there's any risk at all of infringement, you have to go after it. So although the case that Moz and Doz are similar isn't particularly strong, it seems close enough that I'm not surprised Moz is taking this action.