YouTube should have been feeling great. After all Google had managed to shell out 1.6 billion dollars for the video sharing website, but it seems that YouTube’s joy was very much shortlived. A lawsuit has been put forth by Utube.com.

UTube is a company which full name is Universal Tube and they sell tubes and pipes. The main concern that UTube is facing as a company is the amount of cost they are now incurring because of YouTube’s popularity.

Many people have been hitting UTube.com in search of YouTube. This has meant that UTube.com has been receiving over 2 million hits a month compared to 1500 before YouTube existed. Their bills as a result have increased (they claim by 100 times).

UTube is also claiming that their name is their identity and having YouTube around and being so popular is - well - taking away from their identity. It will be interesting to see how this goes down. Pete from Mashable.com asked whether UTube is in it for the money and I too wondered the same thing.

Is it a strategic move to grab some money from a rich company, or do their arguements have any validation? Should the popularity of one website mean that they must pay for the costs that other similar named websites incur?

It’s a very interesting case and we will be following it’s outcome.