Wash. tribe unhappy with Microsoft project name

Washington's Tulalip (too-LAY'-lihp) Tribes are unhappy that Microsoft has decided to use their name as the internal label for a new social media project.

Tribal officials are discussing the issue with company officials, and Microsoft Corp. said the name was never intended to leak outside the Redmond software company.

"Tulalip is an internal project code name for the online site Socl.com, which is an internal design project from one of Microsoft's research teams that was mistakenly published to the Web," a Microsoft spokesman said in an email to The Daily Herald. "We have no more information at this time."

Democratic state Rep. John McCoy, a Tulalip tribal member, heard that some Microsoft employees involved in the project live on or near the Tulalip reservation.

"By all accounts, it's an internal project at Microsoft and not a public thing. But in reality they should not have named it Tulalip," McCoy said. "I have no idea what our tribal officials plan to do, but technically these Microsoft employees infringed on the Tulalip name."

John Echohawk, the executive director of the Native American Rights Fund, agrees. The Colorado-based nonprofit law firm he oversees is dedicated to defending the rights of American Indian tribes and individuals.

"It's really a matter of common courtesy, not to say anything of the legalities," Echohawk said. "It's the tribes' name and nobody should run off and use the name without permission."

McCoy laughed when a reporter floated the idea of a new casino game called "Microsoft."

"Well, they take plenty of people to court over intellectual property rights," McCoy said.

Last week, bloggers from around the world speculated that perhaps Microsoft launched "Tulalip" as a social networking service to compete with Facebook and Google+.

The introductory page at Socl.com said, "With Tulalip, you can Find what you want and Share what you know easier than ever."

Also shown were nonworking links for "See how it works," "Privacy Statement," and "Terms of Service."

The page was replaced the same day it appeared with a message acknowledging the error: "Thanks for stopping by. Socl.com is an internal design project from a team in Microsoft Research which was mistakenly published to the web. We didn't mean to, honest."

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Information from: The Daily Herald, http://www.heraldnet.com