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Amazon Flexes Muscle Against Blogger Who Thought It 'Was Nicer Than Average Mega Corporation'

This article is more than 9 years old.

Amazon has spent the last few months doing battle with a major U.S. publisher, fielding a lawsuit from the Federal Trade Commission and readying itself for mobile phone fisticuffs with Apple and Samsung. In that same time period, it's also picked a fight with a little guy.

On Monday, Elias Saba, owner of the website FireTVNews.com received an email from the company asking him to turn over his domain name because it infringed on their trademark of the word "Fire," the go-to name for a number of Amazon's devices. As pointed out first by Ars Technica, Saba was asked by the Seattle company to relinquish the domain within seven days and delete his Facebook page, which also had the same FireTVNews moniker.

"I’ll admit, when I registered the domain, I knew there was a possibility that one day I would be contacted by Amazon’s trademark lawyers," he wrote on his site. "I naively thought Amazon was nicer than your average mega corporation and registered the domain anyway. Lesson learned."

In chatting with Forbes on Wednesday, Saba says he received the complaint from the customer service department of the Amazon Associates program, which gives bloggers kickbacks for referring consumers to Amazon products through online links. That complaint stated that the 32-year-old software engineer had violated the program's terms of service by including the company's trademark in his domain name and social media accounts.

Saba admits that he didn't pay attention to the fine print and says he was moving as quickly as possible to comply with Amazon, which may be using the domain for future purposes by obtaining the rights from the previous owner. Amazon also did not respond to requests for comment.

On April 2, Amazon launched Fire TV, a media streaming, set-top television box and also registered three different trademarks with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office for "Amazon Fire." "Fire" has also become the umbrella brand for the company's Kindle Fire tablets and Fire Phone, its first smartphone.

Registry records for FireTVNews.com shows that that the domain was registered on May 16 by Brea, Calif. web hosting company Dreamhost to which Saba was paying $12 a year. The site's first blog post went up that day on multiplayer gaming on the Fire TV platform.

As of Tuesday, Saba, who has covered Fire TV apps and developments on a daily basis, has renamed his site AFTVnews.com. He's also changed the blog's Twitter account and launched a completely new Facebook page, but not before poking fun at Jeff Bezos' online retailer.

"The new name may not be as good as the previous one, but I wanted to stay away from any reference to the word ‘Fire’, yet keep the name similar," Saba wrote. "Alternately, you can access the site from  www.TheDeviceWhichShallNotBeNamed.com."

Follow me on Twitter at @RMac18 or email me at rmac@forbes.com.