”This is an enormous expense and distraction for us. Contact with our customers has been disrupted so I fear we have lost sales,” added Girkins in the news release.  ”We have even been contacted by police in Australia accusing us of having child pornography on our website. I resent this personally and this confusion is hurting our business.”

”We were there first – by 10 years. Now I see a potential re-branding that could take years to complete,” Girkins said in the statement. ”I’m not the kind of person who looks for lawsuits, but my business is being threatened by this situation.”

According to the company, Universal Tube’s lawsuit asks that YouTube, Inc. stop using the youtube.com domain or pay Universal Tube for the cost of creating a new domain that will not be confused with youtube.com.  The company also wants YouTube to cover the cost of creating new corporate identity and marketing materials to support the new Internet identity.