But who the heck is Josh Lim? He’s a Malaysian freelance Web developer who acquired the domain name--www.whoisadamking.com--three days after Guinness unveiled who Adam King was following about a month of teaser ads. Lim’s Web site went live about four days after that.
This puts a fly in Guinness’ ointment, or in this case, glass of stout, because the company has www.malaysia.net/adamking/ as the Web site for its US$8mil (RM30mil) creation while Lim’s site is easily mistaken for the official Adam King site.
Naturally, Guinness Anchor Bhd Malaysia is foaming at the mouth over Lim’s action.
“Guinness is taking this very seriously because the creator of the whoisadamking Web site is manipulating members of the public into believing this site is associated with the Guinness Adam King campaign,” said Ng Yoke Pun, general manager for marketing at Guinness Malaysia, in an e-mail interview.
“We are concerned because people are being tricked into sending their personal details for more information on Adam King, which they will not be getting from a legitimate source,” he said. “We urge members of the public to immediately cease accessing the whoisadamking Web site.”
Lim’s Web site requests for personal details from visitors if they wish to find out more on why the whoisadamking site does not belong to Guinness or the Adam King in the advertisements.
As at press time, Guinness’ legal department is “looking at the possibility of initiating legal action against the site creator for wrongful use of its trademark,” according to Ng.
Guinness Malaysia announced that the unendorsed site would not affect its ongoing Adam King advertising campaign.
Lim said his intentions were not malicious and that he just wanted to drive home the point that companies and organisations cannot ignore their Web presence anymore.
“I check for domain names every now and then,” he claimed and added that he was very surprised to find that www.whoisadamking.com was not owned by anyone after he saw Guinness’ Adam King advertisements.
“It cost me only RM60 (US$16) to register the domain name, and the whole registration process took only hours,” said Lim. He believes that Guinness should have registered all Adam King related domain names in the first place.
Lim also claimed that the Adam King name is not copyrighted and that it should not be because there could be real people with that name.
He is surprised that he has heard very little from Guinness Malaysia and said that he has only received a warning via e-mail by Guinness’ Adam King, claiming that the beverage company “would be initiating charges of fraud, impersonation, infringement of copyright, and wrongful use of a trademark” against him.
“I’m really interested to find out what they can do to me, and I would like to know why they can’t communicate with me in a more official manner,” Lim said in an interview.
“You cannot ignore your Web presence, and I feel that this could’ve been worse since some other parties might have used the site in a more harmful manner,” he added.
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I think that Josh saying is true. Guinness Anchor Bhd Malaysia shall registered their trademark to secure the whole misunderstanding. They should know that Internet nowadays are used to obtain more information.
Posted by Jeffrey on Wednesday, July 24 2002 09:33 AM