Logos.Com

By MICHAEL KRANTZ/SAN FRANCISCO

Are these logos similar? Certainly. Is that actionable? MICHAEL EISNER is about to find out. Next week intellectual-property lawyer PIERCE O'DONNELL will ask a Los Angeles court for the right to depose the Disney CEO on behalf of GoTo.com the Web search engine that was launched in December 1997 using the logo on the left. The one on the right belongs to Disney's Go Network, which made its online debut just last January. "We think Disney was well aware of our logo and consciously went forward with theirs," says O'Donnell, noting that in legal papers filed in early stages of GoTo's lawsuit, Disney named Eisner a "Person most knowledgeable" on how the image was selected. "They've offered us [a settlement] in the millions. We turned them down," says O'Donnell, who has won rights cases against Paramount (ART BUCHWALD's Coming to America suit) and Sony (which threatened MGM's Bond monopoly). "They keep offering more, and we keep saying no. This is a very, very serious lawsuit." Disney declined to comment.

--By Michael Krantz/San Francisco