SciFi Channel president Dave Howe barely had a chance to finish his opening statement when Media Blvd's Kenn Gold asked the question that it seems the network has been dodging since it announced it created the name "Syfy" last week: Where did this brand come from?

"I don't think that's the case that we're not acknowledging" SyFy Portal, Howe told reporters during a conference call Monday that did not include Airlock Alpha. "We've been actively working on this brand evolution for the last two years. We have explored a lot of name options."

That included coming up with name possibilities and then checking for URLs containing those names and if they can be trademarked.

"Once we looked at alternative names, our existing name, changing the orders of the letters, it became apparent to us that SyFy Portal existed," Howe said. "SyFy Portal is now" Airlock Alpha, he added, originally reversing the words in the site's name.

Howe wanted to make it clear, however: The SyUniverse Group Inc., the former name of what is now Airlock Alpha's parent corporation Quantum Global Media Inc., did not own the domain to syfy.com.

"We were able to secure syfy.com before we entered into a conversation with SyFy Portal," Howe said. "Syfy.com was available and we secured that very early in the process."

Quantum Global Media, however, has made it clear that syfy.com was first created after SyFy World -- the predecessor to SyFy Portal -- was launched.

Syfy.com was started in 2000 by Adapt Inc., a seller of movies -- especially science-fiction movies -- online, who captured the name two years after SyFy World first came online. In fact, soon after the site's launch, both Adapt Inc. and the unincorporated SyFy World (which was being hosted at the time by TrekNation, but completely owned by Michael Hinman) entered into an agreement that required Syfy.com to post a statement at the bottom of its main page that would make it clear to visitors that there was no affiliation between syfy.com and SyFy World. Such agreements were common between entities as a way to protect trademarks when funds may not have been available to fight trademarkable names in court.

Hinman has said in previous interviews throughout the week that he tried to obtain Syfy.com in 2001 when it was decided to secure the SyFy name through an actual domain (up until that time, SyFy World never had a dedicated domain, as it was originally part of a GeoCities expanded domain, and then later as part of a TrekNation expandable domain). In fact, it wasn't until SyFy World merged with Star Trek Portal in 2001 that Hinman and then partner Greg Boubel decided to create a dedicated domain name of syfyportal.com.

Obtaining syfy.com, however, was impossible, as Hinman and Boubel had no funds from their non-commercial site to purchase the domain name from a better-capitalized company that was using it for advertising purposes.

Despite the later failure to capture the syfy.com domain name, Hinman has maintained that it doesn't relinquish his ability to claim credit for the creation of the Syfy name.

"In the late 1990s and the beginning of the millennium, I was less interested in obtaining domain names and more interested in building the brand that I had developed years before," Hinman said. "Just because I lacked the necessary funds to fight an existing DVD sales company for a domain name doesn't mean that I gave up ownership of the name. I made $18,000 a year at the time at my day job, and was actually paying for SyFy World and later SyFy Portal out of my own pocket. The Internet world worked a little bit differently back in those days."

Michael Hinman was not invited to be a part of Monday's conference call, but instead has been offered a chance to interview Howe directly March 24, which he as accepted. The results of that interview are expected to appear on Airlock Alpha Tuesday or Wednesday.

Hinman also will talk about the "Syfy" name for the first (and possibly only) time in a live forum this Friday, March 27 beginning at 8 p.m. ET on the newly rechristened Alpha Waves radio program, formerly known as SyFy Radio, which Hinman hosted for nearly a year. He will fill in for new host Wayne Hall to talk about the name which will stream live or be available later as a podcast at www.BlogTalkRadio.com/AlphaWaves.