05/12/97 TICKETMASTER VS. MICROSOFT

TICKETMASTER VS. MICROSOFT
The two have come to blows over ads on the Web
Point, click, and surf. You do it every time you cruise the Internet. Better yet, you can do it for free.
Not if Fredric D. Rosen has his way. The fiery, combative CEO of Ticketmaster Corp. charged Microsoft Corp. on Apr. 28 in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles with unfairly trading on Ticketmaster's name and services. At issue is Microsoft's Seattle Sidewalk Web site. The transgression? Sidewalk, a service packed with arts and entertainment information, has links to Ticketmaster Online that lets surfers order tickets to Seattle events.
''UNPRECEDENTED.'' Such links are everywhere in cyberspace; the culture promotes open exchange of information. But Rosen wants this one removed. The problem: When Sidewalk users click on the Ticketmaster connection, they are whisked off not to Ticketmaster itself, but to a Ticketmaster page created by Microsoft. From there they can click over to Ticketmaster Online. But while they're at the ''Ticketmaster Northwest'' page run by Sidewalk, consumers are confronted with four ads and three charge-card icons.
Rosen says Microsoft shouldn't be allowed to use Ticketmaster's trademarked name to sell ads, and that the credit-card listings undermine Ticketmaster's relationship with MasterCard, its preferred credit card. He wants
Microsoft to pay for providing an event-ticketing service on Sidewalk--or get rid of the offending page and links. Nonsense, says Frank Schott, Sidewalk's general manager. ''It's unprecedented that we should have to share revenue for linking to someone's site,'' he says. ''We're going to defend this very vigorously.''
Ticketmaster's isn't the first challenge to Web links. Media companies including the Washington Post, CNN, and Time Inc. are suing TotalNews for ''hijacking'' their content. TotalNews provides links to the companies' Web sites but calls them up inside a frame that keeps the TotalNews logo and advertisers prominently displayed. The media giants' suit combined with the Ticketmaster litigation could transform the way companies operate online. ''If the crux of these suits is linking without the linkee's permission, it could change the nature of the Web,'' says Ronald J. Palenski, a partner at Gordon & Glickson, a Washington (D.C.) law firm.
Rosen isn't concerned. He just wants Microsoft to pay for access to the service that Ticketmaster has created. ''Let's not hide behind the argument that the Web is free,'' says. He aims to make sure that, if Microsoft won't pay, Sidewalk will hit a dead end.
By Larry Armstrong in Los Angeles and Amy E. Cortese in New York