Ronnie Rodriguez, founder of AlternaBay, said he is changing the name of his auction site to AlternaBid to avoid getting into a prolonged legal battle with eBay. AlternaBay is a small, online auction site based in San Francisco catering to the gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender community. According to Rodriguez, eBay sent him a letter claiming AlternaBay's domain name and logo infringes on eBay's trademark and will cause consumers to "mistakenly believe that AlternaBay is sponsored by, or affiliated with eBay."

"My dream was to create a fun and safe place for our community. I feel I have been taken advantage of by ebay, which I prefer to refer to as EVILBay, as they know I don't have the resources to fight them fairly. I know that we are in the right and I know that no one owns the word Bay."

In the past year, eBay has forced no fewer than three online sites to modify their names to remove the word "bay." BayPal.com became inkFrog.com in April, BrickBay.com changed to BrickLink.com in February, and BidBay.com changed to AuctionDiner.com in March and became Bidway.com in July.

http://www.alternabid.com