Lulu wants to meet Hulu in Sulu court

As you might recall, NBC Universal and News Corp. announced last week that it would call its well funded, fledgling content distribution service Hulu.com (which ironically means "cease and desist" in Swahili). Now Lulu.com, which calls itself the "premiere marketplace for new digital content on the Web" wants to sue Hulu for name similarity infringement. Here is the salient part of the note from Lulu's Ken Peters, standing in for Lulu founder Robert Young, also a founder of Red Hat:

As you may know, the previously unnamed joint venture for digital content distribution between NBC Universal and News Corp. announced last week that it would call itself Hulu.com. Because of their obvious similarities, the name Hulu.com presents a serious threat to the brand that Lulu.com has worked to build over the past five years.

Lulu.com has filed for an injunction against Hulu.com to prevent it from continuing to use the Hulu.com name. The lawsuit seeks only for Hulu.com to stop using the name to avoid confusion in the marketplace between these two digital content platforms, especially for the more than 1.2 million Lulu.com customers.

Because of their obvious similarities, the name Hulu.com presents a serious threat to the brand that Lulu.com has worked to build over the past five years. The lawsuit seeks only for Hulu.com to stop using the name to avoid confusion in the marketplace between these two digital content platforms, especially for the more than 1.2 million Lulu.com customers.

Here are the two sites. Are you confused? Hulu, Lulu, Zulu, Culu, Vulu and of course Sulu.