Be careful, you guys who’ve taken town or city names as Twitter handles. As we know, Twitter accounts are now being treated like domain names. And one guy in Germany is about to test the law on this.
Mark Zondler registered http://twitter.com/mannheim in 2007 as his tech company Mikogo, a desktop sharing tool, is based in the town of that name, namely, Mannheim, Germany.
However, the City elders of Mannheim now say he must give up the account or be dragged through the courts.
Mikogo is not giving up however. It registered the account fair and square and, as it points out in a post, the city could easily get something like “city_mannheim”. (Then again, the more press this gets the less likely it will. Backfire anyone?)
Mikogo has until February 10th to hand over the name.
I for one can’t wait for this face-off.