Which company owned utube.com and sued YouTube in 2006 over traffic confusion?

Universal Tube & Rollform Equipment owned utube.com and took legal action against YouTube in 2006 over traffic confusion.

Universal Tube is an Ohio-based manufacturer and supplier of tube mills, pipe mills, and rollforming machinery. It had acquired the utube.com domain in 1996, years before YouTube became a household name.

After YouTube’s rapid rise, many users accidentally typed utube.com when they meant youtube.com. The resulting traffic reportedly overwhelmed Universal Tube’s servers; in August 2006, the company’s site received tens of millions of mistaken visits. Universal Tube filed legal action on October 30, 2006.

The dispute was eventually settled, and the company moved its website to utubeonline.com in April 2007. The case is often remembered as a trademark or domain-name clash, but the immediate practical problem was confusion between two nearly identical web addresses.