If so, then David now faces a trial overseen by a federal judge who has already made a ruling strongly favoring Goliath -- a decision in which the judge described the purported underdog's main defenses as "disingenuous" and "not credible."

U.S. District Judge Patti Saris last week handed down a preliminary injunction forcing Rayne, who owns Main Street Copier & Fax Repair of Hudson, to stop using five Web domain names he registered last year.

The Web addresses all use either the name of Savin Corp., a Connecticut maker of photocopiers and other business machines, or Gestetner, a copier company Savin acquired in 1998. Savin itself is a subsidiary of Ricoh Corp. of New Jersey, part of the $13 billion Japanese corporation Ricoh Co. Ltd.

If Judge Saris finds that Rayne violated a 1999 federal law against cybersquatting, he could be liable for $600,000 in damages, plus attorneys' fees. Congress passed the law to prevent Net users from buying up cheap Web addresses that include corporate names, then improperly using them or extorting businesses to buy them back.

Rayne, whose attorney is his wife, Susan, has complied with the judge's ruling by withdrawing his name, phone and fax numbers from the five sites to which Savin objected -- savincopier.com, savincopiers.com, savinfax.com, gestetnercopier.com and gestetnercopiers.com. (He's also withdrawn info from a sixth site, gestetnerfax.com, which Savin plans to add it to its case.)

No trial date has been set. A final pre-trial conference is scheduled for August.

Rayne registered the six domain names in January 2000, along with more than 20 others using the trade names of Canon, Fujitsu, Hewlett-Packard, Hitachi, Konica, Lanier, Okidata, Panasonic, Ricoh and Xerox. Savin, which asked him to stop using the sites last April, has been the only company to object.

Rayne -- who developed an amateur interest in business machines in the 1990s and founded his repair shop to make a living from it -- says he has no interest in profiting from the domain names, either by selling them or by diverting unsuspecting Web seekers to sites advertising his business.

The sites -- an example can be found here -- never mention Main Street Copier. Their only link to Rayne's business was an e-mail address, copierrepair@prodigy.net, that he has since changed. Rayne says he registered the domains in order to start chat sites, to attract groups of business machine users who could exchange information about their use and repair.

Savin attorney David Einhorn argues that, in addition to improperly diluting the power of Savin's trademark, Rayne's Web addresses could divert repair business from authorized Savin and Gestetner dealers, which Main Street Copier is not.

Rayne countered, "My intention from the start has only been to help owners of business machines. Because of my in-depth knowledge, I felt I could provide a public service to the community. At no time did I use these sites in a derogatory manner to these companies. I've never been out to extort anything from anyone."

While recognizing that Rayne practiced no extortion, Judge Saris disbelieved his explanations.

To prove its case, Savin must determine that Rayne is using the domain names with "bad faith intent to profit" from them. While acknowledging that a chat room can be a "fair use" defense under the law, Judge Saris wrote, "Rayne's argument might be persuasive if any of his sites actually offered such consumer education and commentary."

The judge ruled that Rayne's registration of more than a score of domain names indicated an intent to profit. "I find Rayne's explanation of his motives disingenuous in light of the circumstances of his business and utter lack of activity in the consumer education arena," she wrote.

Saris also rejected as "not credible" Rayne's defense that he reasonably believed his conduct was lawful. She wondered why he registered corporate names while avoiding available generic names like copierchat.com and copiertalk.com.

She added, "There is also no evidence in the record to indicate that Rayne has backed up his investment with any steps to actually implement this plan for fair use."

Rayne said he planned to develop the sites partly to educate himself about the Web, a technology that remains foreign to him.

Susan Rayne said she will object to Judge Saris's ruling in part because the judge incorrectly said her husband put up notices about the chat sites on at least two Savin sites only after the litigation started.