Plugin name conflict causing the wrong plugin installed

Hi. This is an issue recently raised by users of one of my WordPress plugin.

I wrote Permalink Redirect back in 2005 to solve the issue of canonical permalink URL, and it has been downloaded many times and installed on many WordPress sites. Its core functionality has been integrated into WordPress 2.5 although it is now doing a bit more that just fixing the permalink. Currently the version in my own Subversion repository is 0.8.5 and is compatible with WP 2/2.5/2.6.

Then one of my users notified me that when he visit the plugin management page, the Permalink Redirect plugin has been marked that a new version is now available. User has been given the option to download or upgrade it automatically. To his horror, after the upgrade my plugin now ceases to be installed, and a complete different plugin with the same name but different author is now installed and activated.

Doh.

Now my question is, how can two totally independent plugins with different author and different plugin URL be allowed to be replaced by one another? Moreover, I would like to know whether there’s any solution in this situation.

Cheers,
Scott