I just received an Email from Gary Jones of Monster Hosting. I wrote about Gary’s web hosting business back in December after Ed Lau got a front page Digg on one of his stories. We were very impressed that the $4.95 per month webhosting plan Ed got was able to handle the Digg with no problems what so ever. Because of that, I recommend Monster Hosting to anyone looking for a place to host his or her blog.
The Email Gary sent informed me that he is changing the name of the company to BlueFur.com because of allegations of trademark infringement. Instead of fighting the allegations, Gary elected to settle the case out of court. Part of the agreement states he cannot reveal which company made the allegations against him, other than say it’s a very large US based company with deep pockets.
It won’t take a rocket scientist to figure out the allegations of trademark infringement came from Monster Cable. This company, which owns the “Monster” trademark, has been launching lawsuits against any company with Monster in their name. It was only a matter of time before they got to Monster Hosting. Or so I thought.
Turns out Monster Cable was not the company going after Monster Hosting, and since Gary wasn’t allowed to tell, I had to do some digging. Who would want to go after MonsterHosting.ca? Then it clicked in – MonsterHosting.COM! A whois check on MonsterHosting.com shows it’s own by Network Solutions. That would certainly qualify as a “large US company with deep pockets.”
Two Evil Guys
Monster Cable was founded by Noel Lee (pictured with me on the right). He’s a nice guy, very eccentric (he Segways around Vegas instead of walk) and extremely rich (net worth in the 100’s of millions). I think he likes the Segway because it makes him taller than me.
The fact that Lee’s company (he owns 100% of Monster Cable) sued every Tom, Dick and Harry with Monster in their name makes Noel a pretty evil guy, which may explain why I took a picture with him – we’re both Chinese and we’re both evil. However, I have a feeling that Noel is more evil than me (hard to imagine, huh?). I’m sure if Noel haven’t done so yet, he’ll unleash the monster lawyers on Network Solution’s ass real soon. For all I know, they may have already settled and Netsol now has the rights to use the Monster name for hosting.
To clear things up, Monster Hosting is now known as Blue Fur. I believe the promo code “JohnChowRocks” will still give you 15% off any hosting plan.