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France: No Google Text Ads For Trademarked Words
ASN writes "Reuters reports that a French court barred Google from providing text ads with search results for trademarked terms, except those from the trademark owner (in this case, 'Bourse des vols,' potentially -- 'Microsoft,' 'Scientology'
even 'Linux').
According to Reuters, 'If it was upheld on appeal and validated in other countries the decision could force the search services to pre-screen search terms for trademarks before letting advertisers use them.' Google was fined 75,000 euros for the practice, and would have to pay 1,500 euro for each further infraction while appeal is underway (which
makes one wonder if Google is paying for this)."
They can't force Google to pay anyway. Google is in America and France is in .. well, France. Basically, Google can tell them to fuck off as the law in France doesn't even apply!
Bloody stupid French.
..J`ACCUSE!!
Must be nice to be rich and buy your own French judge. Do they also dress up like a french maid when they bend over for their master's bidding?
Such laws do not serve the interests of the people. When the French would not have Google service they would complain to their government representatives.
Trademarks? WHAT trademarks? This is ludicrous. If someone types in Ford, how is Google supposed to know if they're searching for Ford Motors, Gerald Ford, or informating on fording rivers? If I type in Windows, do they have to screen all ads not by Microsoft - even those for window cleaners?
Insanity. Trademark laws were a good idea, but they're now even more insane than copyright laws. The courts seem to have forgotten that trademarks have a limited scope based on area of business and geographical area.
That's not lies. Are you honestly saying that biological weapons aren't WMD
You should watch the film '28 Days Later' sometime. That will give you an insight into how deadly biological weapons could be.
Google should dump Google.fr and continue doing what they're doing. That'll leave the French courts with no one to sue nationally and will be another nail in the coffin for French xenophobia.
Trolling is a art,
everybody pay for an add for "google"!!
irony hurts, share the pain.
Comment: Yes I realise the username 'fuckfuck101' makes me sound intelligent, no you cannot buy it from me.
So then what's left to Google, if not copyrighted words? That's insane.
Has France made one good decision in the last 100 years?
A trademark is an exclusive right to use a name, phrase or logo with regards to a specific market. It is not entirely impossible for two different companies to have the same trademark--remember the nissan.com debacle? The original owner of the nissan.com site (not the car manufacturer) had a trademark on the name "Nissan" and got there first. Another (more prominent) company with a trademark on "Nissan" sued to get the domain and won. However, the original owner still runs a business with the name "Nissan".
What are the chances that the US and many other countries will follow? Then Google will have to check every advertiser, every keyword, etc. for trademarks. That's quiet stupid.
These ads didn't register to get displayed when searching for Bourse des vols but when search for either bourse or vols!
Text ads
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
you should read the book "dude, where's my country?" by michael moore.
Umbrello even brags about this:
"Umbrello Competes with Commercial Alternatives 14/10/2003
Poseidon and at least one other company have bought Umbrello as AdWords on Google. We would like to thank these companies for acknowledging that our Free Software competes with their proprietary and commercial offerings."
I would, but my political humor/fiction/dumbass books collection is full.
u are teh dumb.
we are not talkinh "28 days later" we are talking some known chemicals, not even weaponized for the most part, and NO vehicle for delivery.
hint: using a pure sci-fi zombie film to shed light on chem/bio weapons that have known effects is generally a bad idea.
u are teh dumb!
Nice troll.
Aside from the fact no biological weapons have been discovered in any mass scale, and none at all that were at the end of their use date (i.e., Iraq had produced no WMDs in years - why invade now?). I favour regime change, just mythical reasons should not be used to justify it.
Also, 28 days later was not a film about bio weapons, it was an analogy for society as it exists now. The 'virus' transferred was called 'rage' in the film... one was infected by another inflicting it upon them... it was created in the first place by overexposure to violence... it is an analogy to the society we live in where we are over exposed to biolence, where we take it for granted and wher we don't realise it exiss already [in the film the army regiment were afflicted by a form of rage, though different from the all-out virus, their 'infection' was the one society now has - try to battle an enemy but become absorbed by hate - the virus only absorbed them when they had already destroyed themselves].
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FreeNET user? Comfortable with the adverse selection?
...because the word "Euro" is trademarked in the US.
exactly! and by the way it's non-fiction
You can't trust anything Michael Moore says. He's a communist and uses two-faced tactics on people he wishes to attack verbally in a most unfair manner (look at how he interviewed good old Charlton Heston in Bowling for Columbine, it was a disgraceful breach of good manners and fair play.)
I'd rather get my opinions from less deranged sources than that paranoid lunatic. The conspiricies he implies in his reporting are nothing short of ridiculous.
Reading the article, it seems to me that advertisers can't advertise on trademarked phrases like "bourse des vols" -- but they could still advertise on "bourse" and "vols" separately. And all the ads could have originated that way.
If so all Google would need to do was check from each advertiser that the phrase they're "buying" isn't the trademark of a competing product. (eg, someone buying "Ford" to advertise a biography of Gerald Ford needn't worry about lawsuits from Ford Motors -- but GM can't buy the word "Ford" to advertise their own cars.)
It's another matter that I don't believe generic phrases like "bourse des vols" should be trademarkable...
whacky French
Where did you get that bizarre analogy from?
The whole point of 28 Days Later was how insidious biological weapons can be when released (accidently in that case) onto the general public. We don't have biohazard regulations for nothing, you know.
Are the Google French servers even located in France? If so, perhaps they should be moved out of the country and the French told to kiss Google's derriere.
And the festering mass of parasitic consumption bannered under the US flag.
Trademarks are to safeguard the reputation of an entity in their market segment. For example, there's several comments about Nissan in the thread. I can trademark Nissan as the name for my company as long as that company isn't in the same markets that the Nissan Motor Corporation is in. There's a Nissan food company that I don't believe is related to the Nissan motor company. As soon as the noodle company started manufacturing motorcycles or engines under the Nissan name, there'd be trademark trouble.
Copyright, on the other hand, is to protect works and ideas of individuals or companies from theft or dilution from others. If I copyright a poem, for example, you are not free to set the poem to music without some sort of compensation to me, the original copyright holder.
There's so little difference between politics and jihad lately...
Trademark law only provides for commercial use of a particular word or phrase in the same market category. It is not trademark infringement to use a trademarked word or phrase which is not in competition with the original.
This is a matter of explicit law. Restricting the use of even commercial speech by the inaccurate interpretation of trademark is in opposition to the guarantees of the First Amendment.
Business isn't willing to pay for products, innovation and careers, so we get brands, mortgage commercials and layoffs.
No Google for them! See if the French are happy when their government force a great search engine out.
I am glad I don't live in the FRANCE!
Oh...I forgot that was only cool if you dissed the U.S.
all sources used in his books are given at the end, read one and check all the readily available sources, most on governmental websites. you don't get your opinions from someone, you form them as a result of weighing up different points of view.
Only misererable attempts to squelch capitalism and freedom have come from France in recent times. I say, fuck 'em.
Google ought to drop google.fr and get it over with.
Trademark owner only? That would certainly seem to invalidate ads by organizations which have a license to use the trademark (so, then, my franchise McDonald's couldn't have a text ad on Google [given that this logic gets accepted by courts in the US] because all I do is license the marks, I don't own them). Even if the search phrase is trademarked, and the text ad(s) in question aren't using the mark legally, the responsibility for the Ad should be on the shoulders of the ad-maker, not the agent who displays it. This is a universally stupid decision.
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former. (Einstein)
That is the literal 'wat-happened-in-the-film' but, like most works of art, was not the point.
Nor was Animal Farm a story for children about animals, nor were most other great pieces of modern literature or film what they appeared on the surface.
28 days later is about an infection that destroys society... when society tries to battle it they fight amongst themselves and although they were resistant against infection when united they turned to self nterest and destroyed themselves... only acting as a grou did they succeed.
Do not be spoonfed as Hollywood would like you to be... sure special effects are fun but please use your brain and at least try to interpret something when you pay to see it and not sit there like a vegetable who walks out and says 'that kicks ass'.
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FreeNET user? Comfortable with the adverse selection?
Poor babies, did I insult you?
First a trademark has to be actively defended or you loose it. So the firm holding the trademark "bourse des vols" defended it being used by competitor. Just like any US yahoo firm would have defended their term used by competitor in anadvertising with "ford" in it for example.
Second what is with all this xenophobic spout I see thrown at the french ? First and formore US judge and politics are as able to make BIIIG way mistake as french one (COPA, DMCA, Patriot act and I pass many other there).
Second if you really do not wish to have any relationship with french , then buy ntohing from them, sell them nothing, do not even speak on them, ignroe them completly. Throwing xenophobic insult at them only show how "petty" and "arrogant" you are. Do really US peopel feel so insucre that they have to throw insult each possible moment at european in general and french in particular ? Tolerance serems a vain word in some people mouth [or writing].
So Please hold off the insult and discuss whether the trademark law are bad or not, or whether the judge really outstepped its power. Remmember, he did not judge whether internet was an althogether different medium, he did judge it as it was one of the old break and mortar medium [paper], and in France you DO NOT HAVE the right to use your competitor trade mark. (or at least so I remmember. This is why we do not have comparative publicity olike in US/UK).
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
France regulates advertising quite differently from other expression. TV commercials require advance approval. Sexy ads are fine. (Although, since 2001, sexual domination and violence in ads has been restricted.) But there are many other restrictions. If an advertiser claims their product is "better", they have to be able to prove it in court or face criminal penalties. Here's the official FAQ on advertising in France.
Under US law, AdWords are clearly "commercial speech" when they lead to a product, The FTC could regulate them.
Google can live with this; they just need to require AdWords purchasers to certify that they're not infringing a trademark.
How is google supposed to know if a word is trademarked? Does France have some kind of list of all registered trademarks, and what kind of product or company they specifically refer to availible electronically? Or even on paper? Even if such a list were availible, how is google supposed to know whether I was searching for information pertaining to a product with a trademarked name or just a normal combination of words? Perhaps I was slightly off in my terminology, and happened to enter a trademarked phrase as opposed to what I was actually looking for (because I didn't know exactly what it was called)? I fear that the simpliest thing for google to do at this point is to start running banner ads. Otherwise, it is likely that some daft frenchmen are going to put them under, one search at a time.
====
Crudely Drawn Games
The best solution for Google would be to block French users from it's search engine until their courts or government reverse this ruling.
Ok, I don't want to throw the baby out with the bathwater, but, not allowing the use of trademarks by competitors is really a bad idea. The US is wrong about USA PATRIOT and wrong to flaunt the UN, but, France is really wrong about this.
So there. Now we have two sets of stupid leaders.
This is my sig.
This sentence alone would cost me $0.25
0110100100100000011000010110110100100000011000100
I think this is a fair idea. If France doesn't like Google's service then Google should just leave France.
Come on, people are getting older, but not THAT old...
Umm, France didn't join in the war on Iraq because it was IMMORAL and ILLEGAL. I say good for them for not licking Bush's ass like England did.
That's a little off. The idea and law of copyright is that I need your permission. Some people pay to have their poems set to music. It's sad to see that the idea of copyright went from artist control over their work, into greed and profit. Not blaming you, it's just the new mindset.
God you Yanks are shallow. No wonder Hollywood treats you all like you have a 2 minute attention span.
I would think that the competitor buying the words should be at fault.
What we call folk wisdom is often no more than a kind of expedient stupidity.-Edward Abbey
You should rather say : If Google doesn't like french interpretation of trademark laws then Google should just leave France.
I think that Google could ban Bourse des vols. It should be able to remove any result of queries containing that trademark, so the trademark owner will be happy and... missing.
I don't know anything about French law or what the basis for this could be, but what is the problem with providing ads along with search results? Is it some anti-competitive thing? Google by far has the least intrusive ad scheme for a generic search engine.
More importantly, how will this effect Froogle? A generic search engine provide by Google tuned for finding stuff to buy. How does French law work with this?
We don't like your kind here, frenchee. Why don't you go back to eating your cheese and bitching about a 35 hour work week. Why don't you just go ahead and go on strike about it.
Actively defending the trademark would be served by suing the organizations which used the trademark in an infringing fashion. Google isn't doing that here; if anyone is, it would be those who created the text ads. Google is not responsible for the infringement, and that makes the ruling untenable.
Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former. (Einstein)
Surely Charlton Heston promoting gun rallies post-Columbine is more of a disgraceful breach of good manners and fair play. And yes ihe did it very near and very soon after Columbine.
Yet for anyone who has actually seen the film and doesn't spout opinions about it on the basis of others' opinions, the film is not anti guns. It recognises the incidence of death from gun law in Canada is very low despite Canada having similar gun laws. It recognises most gun owners are not psychopaths and many gun owners own them for responsible reasons.
The film puzzles but the only thing it blames the most is fear - people kill from fear, they are afraid of those around them and hold guns for the wrong reasons - that despite falling crime rates fear of crime grows. Why? Because it is good business for TV networks.
I am not a great fan of MM, but that is why MM is demonised more than he deserves - the single thing he identifies as having some possible impact on causing gun crime is TV networks portrayal of crime, so they wish to dilute his image rather than rectfy themselves (and why should they as they are in competition to carry the best gun-chase, the best murder investigation, the most grusome mass-murcer exposure).
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FreeNET user? Comfortable with the adverse selection?
As any French citizen (including myself) knows, French justice is completely fscked up. Check here. To be completely fair, at least the lawyers here are still half decent.
Google should just ignore the French court decision, seeing as how they are not bound by French law, not having an operating presence except over the Internet, in France.
What are they going to do about it?
Did you apply your brain before whining about the insult?
Suppose Company A owns and registers a trademark on their product named MegaSuperItem. If company B runs an advertisement saying "ImprovedNiftyItem -- twice as good as MegaSuperItem," who is traditionally at fault? I believe that Company B should be held liable, not the media that published the advertisement.
There is also, as many other people have commented, the fact that trademarks pertain to a specific market or field. The Internet encompasses all those fields recognized by trademark offices and many more. Owning a trademark does not give you exclusive rights to the word -- except as it relates to marketing or selling products or services.
Why should Google be responsible for doing trademark research and forming a legal opinion on whether every AdWord they run may infringe someone's copyright? That burden goes far beyond what is reasonable for any company to bear.
What? A ten year old vial in someones fridge. C'mon.
This seems like a bad idea, at least in some cases, for the trademark holder. There are many cases where you *want* other companies to have access to your trademarks for advertising purposes.
As an example, I recently bought a Kawasaki motorcycle. It's a great bike, but there are some extra things I want, and so I went to google and searched for Kawasaki aftermarket parts. Now, every one of the advertisers was using the Kawasaki name, but without a healthy aftermarket presence, Kawasaki would sell a heck of a lot less of their product -- people are a whole lot more willing to buy a motorcycle if they know they can get performance parts for the bike without doing a whole lot of digging.
Even more simply, what if someone is using their name to say that their company is retailing the products of the trademark holder? Then they'd be cutting into their own visibility in the market place, and lowering their own sales.
It seems to me that this is not the most intellegent move on the part of the trademark holder. If you protect your trademark so passionately that you hurt your own product sales, what the hell was the trademark for in the first place?
Narrative
And the French manage to screw something up again. Yipee!
The only reason Santa is so jolly is because he knows where all the naughty girls live.
"It was as though the Internet and the real world were two different worlds, but this ruling shows that there is only one world"
In the real world, you can run a magazine ad, or put up a billboard saying "Are you in the market for a Honda? Take a look at Kia, first.".
and so have to ABIDE french law of not using your competitor trademark.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
How do you like people to insult everything about the US everytime a stupid judge makes a crazy decision? Heck, that is without mentionning Ashcroft.
Google appeals, France surrenders.
Can't they just claim to have Weapons of Mass Destruction like all the countries who beg for media attention?
blog
I think the problem here is that the advertiser is using a trademarked word (not belonging to them) in there ad taken out on Google. The court is saying that Google can not let someone take out an add that uses another parties trademarked work.
An example would be SCO placing an add with Google that included "Red Hat" "IBM" "Linux" and other Linux related trademarks.
An ad like this would come up when a user Google for any car company. In a cense this is using someone else's trademark to create confusion.
It ain't. You missed the point entirely.
What if I get an ad that's not linked to a term, but just happens to be pertinent? Why doesn't google just make a pool of words or terms related to a specific market and sell ads for when somebody is searching for any information about that market? It would be an easy way to show how dumb this ruling is.
Also, am I supposed to stop advocating Linux now every time somebody says Windows sucks? Am I too at fault for tying an ad to a trademarked word?
google should just pull out of france. if they wanna whine about trademarks lets see how they like no google search.
If I recall properly the US had ruled that pop-up ad services like Gator could use their programs to put up an advertisement for another company (say like fedex when you went to UPS) when you went to a company's web-site. Here you have a search engine, whose very idea is to provide the consumer with various places to go regarding various subjects and they can't have advertisements on their own pages.
By god, because Google's Text Ads are so pervasive and they serve so much to dillute a trademark, the same principle used in the US case applies here, that a person using a certain service (say google or gator) agrees to the terms of that service (which is that they see ads, admitedly one is less obtrusive than the other but the function is the same) (though for google these terms are implicit, but then again it isn't like your getting a full screen pop up add for Linux Distros when you search for Microsoft, and what happens if someone searches for Windows?) and within that the service is allowed to deliver to you any content that does not violate either the law or the terms of service.
In my view there is no basis for this order, the text adds do not serve as a significant annoyance (not that it would matter in the first place), they do not demonstrably dillute the trademark of any company (unless of course they were overtly slanderous, Such as "Bill Gates devours the flesh of babies and sells weapons of mass destruction to terrorists, buy Linux"), and it's not outside of Google's rights to make money for their services, and for a competitor to be able to place an advertisement on a page where someone is looking for a similar product is a good place to make that money. I apologize for the incoherence.
You can't trust anything Michael Moore says. He's a communist and uses two-faced tactics on people he wishes to attack verbally in a most unfair manner
...meanwhile, rather than see the movie yourself to draw this conclusion, you get your information (propaganda) from some website run by some fascist who uses two-faced tactics on people and attacks them verbally in a most unfair manner. Who specifically (O'Reilly, Limbaugh, whoever) doesn't matter, point is: pot, kettle, black. And that without even getting into the validity of Moore's views.
Oh, good job. Use as an example a fictional, physically impossible desease from a fucking movie.
They found some botox, for crissake. It's used in cosmetic surgery to stop wrinkles by paralyzing non-essential facial muscles.
At www.google.fr, Google lists a physical office in Paris. So Google certainly does have an operating presence in France.
Either way you want to say it, if I am providing a free service and people are throwing rocks at me then the polite thing to do would be to leave.
It's not like they are being asked to censor the search results. They are being asked to be more prudent with their advertisments. There are two things that google can do:
(a) create legal verbage that you have to clock "I am not violating anyones trademark" when you submit an AdWord;
(b) when an adword is submitted, have your staff do a quick "check" to see if it is not an obvious violation of trademark (ie, allowing a site about presidents but not GM to put up adword for "Ford")
By taking proactive actions to protect trademark Google can make sure that it is not trampling on someone's hard work in establishing a business name. I think, unlike other "intellectual property" trademark is a *great* idea, and what is being asked here is _completely_ resonable.
Clark Evans
look at how he interviewed good old Charlton Heston in Bowling for Columbine, it was a disgraceful breach of good manners and fair play
You find me a journalist or editor that doesn't do that, regardless of political leaning (and hasn't just not been caught yet), and I'll be impressed.
Is this ruling saying that Safeway, for example, cannot buy and ad saying "Safeway sells Starbucks Coffee" or is it it merely saying that they can't have link text of just "Starbucks Coffee" linking to their site?
Its subtle, but I can see where the latter could be a trademark infringment. It is taking advantage of the brand recognition, and by only having the name could imply that its a link to Starbucks. That's kind of analogous to opening up a 12-pack labelled Coca-cola and finding 12 cans of Pepsi inside; the "wrapper" is misleading.
But if its an outright ban on using the trademarked term in an ad, then that is abso-friggin-lutely insane, and in fact seems to be anti-competitive.
blog
I suppose you one of the people who call those potato thingies at fast food restraunts "Freedom Fries". Ick.
Instead of stopping other ads for the trade maked word, they should add another box right above it reserved for trademark holders. Otherwise this amounts to forcing google to reserve advertising space for the trademark holder.
If they are forced to comply, Google should keep with their clear and well labeled design and do something like this for their right side...
I LIKE knowing when I search for a company, I might find better deals from competitors, but I would like to be able to find the Trademark holder too.
Just ban the site from France. It is a easy fix and people will fix the problems themselves if they want to use google over thier.
I didn't use the preview button, so get over it!!!!
Mike
What about situations where "competitors" are owned by the same company? For instance, MTV and VH1 are both Viacom, and Buick, Cadillac, Saturn, etc. are all owned by GM. Can GM buy an ad under the term "Pontiac" to sell a Saab?
GL
Some country somewhere (like Tuvalu or Tokelau) ought to start their own trademark registry; and for $20 or so you could buy one that applies there. Ford Motors could trademark Infiniti in Tuvalu and then buy a Google keyword for it, and have a Ford ad pop up. If the French protest, well, Ford does hold a valid trademark, and the internet is international.
Ok...sorry about that....
We'll just remove any reference to your company from our search database.
See how quick the tune changes.
let's face it, this is a confusing ruling. but it is coming from the french. so what else would you expect.
My problem? I was perfectly gruntled, until some numbnuts came by and dissed me.
The G5. Adventure Thank fish. (Score:0) by Anonymous Coward one Sunday October 19, @01:25PM (# 7254627) After 12 years, machine 386 antique of the fanatic of Linux gives to the top to the top of the fantome! The machine is passee by the alot, passing by DOS 5.0, 6.0, Windows 3.11, Windows 95, Windows 98 and Debian gnu/Linux. It same had Geforce 4 on top employing a AGP with the conveter ISA. But maintaining the machine had died. Thus the fanatic of Linux has decide to go in the local world of PC to obtain a new machine. He has decide to obtain Athlon 3500+ Packard Bell, when all it suddenly he heard a geant DUNNNNNNNNNN! And derriere, was to him the largest larger cheese in the world! Derriere was to him this large geek bearded with a logo of APPLE on its trunk. He was a fanatic of APPLE. Suddenly the fanatic of Linux had has weired the feeling while one geant Titatainum X appeared on an enormous posting of liquid crystal display. Scale of titanium X around a blue face of smiling enormous, whereas a cube appeared and turned towards a top of office. The fanatic of APPLE starts to speak about his affection of imper, and how it was going to buy G5 to achieve his collection, but price, was almost 5.000 EUR, whereas the bell of packard coute only 2.000 EUR, and was noticbly faster. Scale of rotation of ball of rainbow for ages while it tried to copy 17 a file of the mega-byte mp3 from the iPOD of the fanatic. [ to be continuous ]
In other news Slashdot fined $2000 per link click on a news article about Google that caused Google to be fined 1500 euroes with each search.
I've left to find myself. If you happen to see me, please, keep me there until I return.
Im very confused, does this mean i cant search for "I Hate Microsoft" sites?
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
If this holds, what about all the resellers who want to promote some vendor's products through AdWords? They are certainly not the TM owners. Perhaps reseller agreements will have to be modified to include a right for this?
I joined two users too late.
Trademarks are used to censor free-speech, if you use a word that has the magical (R) beside it a company that owns it can leverage a lawsuit at you. It kind of reminds me of how companies have censored researchers with the DMCA, only it doesn't apply just to research.
Magistrate Masturbates
bananas like monkeys.
Second what is with all this xenophobic spout I see thrown at the french
Because anything french sucks, and we don't like them! That's what was wrong with Matrix Reloaded, that irritating, pompus french guy.
Do really US peopel feel so insucre that they have to throw insult each possible moment at european in general and french in particular ?
I'm not sure if you mean us or U.S. but either way, we just don't like the french, and it's fun to watch french lovers like you with your vasoline coated french loving assholes stick up for them. Go live in Quebec or France and watch your mimes.
Please prove that I'm wrong saying this.
Hell is not other people; it is yourself. - Ludwig Wittgenstein
Googles response - "what is a euro? we have no euros"
French cheese is pretty good you know, and the 35 hour working week means we have a better quality of life. Maybe you're a little jealous of us because of your 19th century labour laws?
Now, that's comedy!
I'm sorry not to support the general anti-French paranoia, and I realise that the judgement may not have been precisely about this, but I do think that unscrupulous advertisers are misusing trademarks on the net, and that if it can be stopped it should be.
Panurge has posted for the last time. Thanks for the positive moderations.
As it is overwhelmingly clear that to lawyers, any notion of right and wrong is consedered to be mere intellectual abstraction, aren't we long overdue to put them all back under the rocks from under which they crawled?
--- Bill
bomb that shithole
...as I recently discoverd that when one googles for the free software project I am maintaining, one gets a sponsored link for an equivalent commercial program. Now, I don't earn anything anyway with my project, so I don't care so much, but still it feels a little odd.
Google will willingly remove ads for trademark holders. As they explain here:
You can see this in action at Google -- search on "Microsoft" and you get no anti-Microsoft ads. Ditto for lots of other trademark holders.
Trademarks are there to identify goods and services uniquely, not to give some company a monopoly on the use of that word.
As long as they don't misrepresent goods as being identified by the trademark, it is the intent and the purpose of trademarks that anybody can use the trademark to refer to all aspects of a product, good and bad.
So, if I have had a bad experience with "Product X", I should be able to use the trademarked term "Product X" in public statements saying "I didn't like Product X, buy Product Y instead". Furthermore, as a competitor, I should very much be able to buy the "Product X" keyword and get people to come to my site, as long as my product is clearly not confusable with "Product X".
Being able to identify products uniquely is important for an efficient market, but that means being able to identify both good and bad products and to steer people at alternatives.
please read the "Important stuff" section when you post your comment. "Please try to keep posts on the topic" and "Offtopic, Inflammatory, Inappropriate, Illegal, or Offensive comments might be moderated" Some posts are simply xenophobic. Back to the topic: As several say, some countries (like France) do not have the same rules about trademarks. Some countries think it is unfair for a company to use competitors trademarks for its own ads. Indeed, I think it is a not so stupid idea. What if Microsoft bought lots of ads in popular search engines to redirect Linux ads, IBM ads or SUN ads? Not a big deal, well it is not fair way to sell stuff. I prefer to see companies focusing on their products, instead of criticize the competitors products. And in those countries where the comparatives ads are banned, it is of course allowed to compare different products, but only 3rd parties companies are allowed to do that.
France has harassed both Google and Ebay (over Nazi stamp collection sales) now.
:-P
Why don't the two companies simply team up and buy the country of France? It worked for Saddam
Table-ized A.I.
If I ran Google, I'd tell the snail-munchers to block the site at their borders if they were serious. I know I've just about all the French IP numbers from my mailservers, the fucking spamming bastards anyway.
This might be down-modded by Google-fanboys, but it needs to be said: Google has had something like this coming.
As a customer both of Google AdSense and Google AdWords, I have been victim of many of Google's own anti-competitive and censorship policies.
First, if your webpage contains keywords like "war" or "suicide" (as any news page will sometimes) Google will not serve your site paying ads but will serve you Public Service Announcements (PSAs) about saving Gorillas and stuff like that. By Google's own criterion, they wouldn't sponsor news.google.com or the NY Times, except, well, they do. If your money is big enough then it's kay; only smaller sights are oppressed. They have revoked supporting non-PSAs at the recently slashdotted News for Christians site Good Fig:
http://www.goodfig.org
They stopped mainly because Good Fig covers things like the Isreali-Palestinian situation (war), the COPA (the keyword "pornography"), a sex-abuse victim reconciliation study (the keyword "sex"), etc. There also is a story reported here that Google wouldn't allow Valley Firearms LLC or any other firearms retailer to advertise their firearms, while Google will advertise porn links that are only 2 clicks away from ultra-explicit material.
Google wouldn't support paying ads for Slashdot unless Slashdot had big enough money (which they might), because Slashdot covers stories involving the keywords "sex", "pornography", etc., etc.
Next, using Google AdWords I had a click-through-rate (CTR) of 0.6% with an average position of 4-5 while Google requires 0.5% for the top spot so I was doing fine---until Google ran my ad on "content focused" sites and got me a "content focused" CTR of 0.1% and are now trying to charge me a $5 "full-restore" fee for my "underperforming keywords/ads." One of the "content-focused" sites was Amazon.com and they ran my ad on a few book pages where you have to scroll way down and read the "You might also be interested in.." section. Like anyone will ever read that.
So, Google's search page rules and they have some of the best and brightest technical minds working for them; however, when it comes to the money-people Google has hired to direct policy and manage how AdWords and AdSense work, they have some clear issues....
Trademark laws aren't insane. It's this court's ruling that's nuts. Why should Google be any more responsible for filtering user queries through a Magic Trademark Filter than your local flesh-and-blood librarian? If I go to my library and ask for references to "markets for rutabagas", should this ruling compel the librarian to only show me references to the company that registered "markets for rutabagas" as a trademark?
Just another reason why I shoulda gone to law school
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
Google has a monopoly over good search engines (i.e. google is the only search that anyone wants to use). They should block France until the French Government changes their opinion on this ruling. They'll do this because everyone will complain that they can't use google, and google will tell them that google's no longer profitable in France, and that they can't afford to do business there with the new laws. That should result in some change fairly quickly :)
My other car is first.
And advertising that you sell mattresses that you think are better than Serta mattresses doesn't dilute the trademark either.
Welcome to the dark ages of information, pretty soon you will need permission to speak.
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
Second if you really do not wish to have any relationship with french , then buy ntohing from them, sell them nothing, do not even speak on them,
This gives me a good idea.
We should extend the GPL to a NFGPL.
Same rules, except that the license says anyone who is a citizen of France may not use the software until their government stops acting like a bunch of pre-schoolers.
If a company has a problem with another company using their trademark for advertising, they should confront the company who bought the ad, not the media who carried it. Requiring Google to proactively compare every word against trademarks is ridiculous, and is a bad precedent that could be extended to cripple other forms of media.
---------
There is inferior bacteria on the interior of your posterior.
Damn you Fox!!
Manipulate the moderator system! Mod someone as "overrated" today.
My local grocery store (Kroger) includes an advertising discount coupon for a competitor when certain items are purchased. I am sure that in the USA, if it were to become illegal on the internet, a number of companies would have to stop the coupons for competitors. I wonder if this is also common practice in France and grocery stores or other businesses.
I'm no lawyer, and make no attempts to be, but at first glance this seems like attacking a Television or Radio broadcaster for allowing it to screen ads mentioning trademarks of other's without permission?
Surely the 'advertiser' is the one committing the crime, and Google is merely the medium, essentially the 'crime scene'?
Can't Google simply state to a advertiser that the advertiser may not use other's trademarks in an Advertisement in such a way that would infringe upon trademark law, and that recource for any infringement would be soley directed at the Advertiser?
Would someone kindly enlighten me?
and what? if my gov is afraid by to mobile labs, then yes, now I really feel unsecure :)
Come on, this is bullshit!
The incompentence of our army already killed more people than those iraqies labs !
I believe that it Nissan Foods is owned by the same conglomerate that owns Nissan Motor. I could be mistaken, but would somebody please find this out?
"No beer until you finish your tequila!" -Leela's Dad
I would respond to this censorship with further censorship.. by BANNING ALL FRENCH IP ADDRESSES!
-- I am. Therefore, I think!
that a people with such a rich culture and full past like the French have such a royally f'ed up legal system.
It heartens me to see that there is one out there worst than the one we have here in the US.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Is it as deadly as the military anthrax, that our army accidently lost? I am more concern by our incompetent army playing with all its biological weapons than some terrorists in Afghans caves... If couple of terorists can kill several thousand of people with few knifes and some newbies airplane courses, I am more concern about airplane security and gov incompetency...
"good old Charlton Heston" I would not say that a person who promote the guns is good... but maybe, you never experienced friends or family death due to guns. I agree the interview was unfair. Interviewing such people is waste of time. They just should be in jail to promote violence and death.
Unless Fords suddenly run better than Toyotas, which seems unlikely, that would be false advertising :) It might possibly also be libel or slander (I forget which) if it led to the false belief that Toyotas were worse.
But, it's still not a trademark violation.
This is why car ads usually are very specific about what they mean by better, using non-arguable facts. Interior room as listed, hp, torque, particular features, third party awards...
Looking for freelance Actionscript (Flash/Flex) or ColdFusion work and/or freelance developers. Email me, put Slashdot
You are right. Maybe Google just should add a disclaimer, and redirect all issues to the advertiser. BTW, I like this rule. I am quite fed up with all these companies using competitors trademarks to fool me.
Maybe you're a fucking idiot. How about that?
I loved the fact that the words Koogle and Google both showed up in the same article.
How often does that happen?
(Excluding the kosher web of course.)
This Like That - fun with words!
I love France. I like their French Foreign Legion, their language, their women. I like Europe in general but I think this time France has gone to far, they have had several mistakes in the past, like building a formidable impenetrable line, but not realizing any intelligent attacker would flank the line before trying to go through it. I will admit it was a great idea but who was the genius who thought they would stop at the border?
So I think we should invade France, nobody will complain because they are as xenophobic as Japan, if not moreso. French wine will be cheap, we could travel to Europe and live on US soil, and we will be right next door to our bed buddies the Brits!
If what you are reading sounds funny, or sarcastic, lame, or stupid
it is because it is supposed to be. just laugh
I'm sorry, but Google rips off people who are even mildly successful with their text ads.
See here, and here.
They've definitely lost my respect. Apparently, if you mention that there are text ads at the top of your site, and direct your readers to click on them if they're interested in the products, Google will tell you that you cheated the system through false clicks when your click amounts gets too high for them to spare the cash.
"Sufferin' succotash."
Waying that w
Holy crap that is about the stupedist thing I have ever heard. If I were Google, I would ban all of france from thier service until it was repealed. Stupid French.
Hikery.net - The best hiking site ever. Made by yours truly.
That what we need in North America. Now TV here is a BS, b/c all ads are useless and non-informative.
Back to the topic: if i type "windows" in Goggle, why should I watch Microsoft ads? I am looking at glass windows for my house! Google was wrong and French goverment has fixed that.
Go France!
Less is more !
So some European court made a ruling. Big deal - if Google is based in America, how do they plan to enforce that ruling? Even if Google has a Google.fr, I would assume that it's hosted in the U.S., making Google untouchable.
If the Iraqi government fined Google for violating the sacred laws of Allah, would Google pay that fine, too?
I made a PHP/MySQL library that prevents SQL injection & makes coding easier!
Trademarks are to safeguard the reputation of an entity in their market segment.
Really? I remember when they were to safeguard consumers from confusion and mirepresentation. I know times change, but why does it have to be for the worse?
everyone assume that you're an idiot than post and remove all doubt. If you don't know that he's referring to the fact that single digit refers to single digit unemployment percentage figures, than the rest of your post doesn't have much credibility. And by most estimates, France's unemployment figure is an underestimate since it doesn't include millions who have simply given up looking for work because they think the situation is so hopeless.
A couple of crazy teenagers shoot a bunch of people and YOU want me (a law-abiding citizen) to give up my right to keep and bear arms?
.357 Magnum will get angry and kill you.
How come the first thing the gun grabbers want to do after a gun crime is try to take the guns from EVERYBODY NOT INVOLVED IN THE CRIME?????
Put your brain back in your head and try to think before you write. Read this:
40 Reasons for gun control
1. Banning guns works, which is why New York, DC, & Chicago cops need guns.
2. Washington DC's low murder rate of 69 per 100,000 is due to strict gun control, and Indianapolis' high murder rate of 9 per 100,000 is due to the lack of gun control.
3. Statistics showing high murder rates justify gun control but statistics showing increasing murder rates after gun control are "just statistics."
4. The Brady Bill and the Assault Weapons Ban, both of which went into effect in 1994 are responsible for the decrease in violent crime rates, which have been declining since 1991.
5. We must get rid of guns because a deranged lunatic may go on a shooting spree at any time and anyone who would own a gun out of fear of such a lunatic is paranoid.
6. The more helpless you are the safer you are from criminals.
7. An intruder will be incapacitated by tear gas or oven spray, but if shot with a
8. A woman raped and strangled is morally superior to a woman with a smoking gun and a dead rapist at her feet.
9. When confronted by violent criminals, you should "put up no defense -- give them what they want, or run" (Handgun Control Inc. Chairman Pete Shields, Guns Don't Die - People Do, 1981, p.125).
10. The New England Journal of Medicine is filled with expert advice about guns; just like Guns & Ammo has some excellent treatises on heart surgery.
11. One should consult an automotive engineer for safer seatbelts, a civil engineer for a better bridge, a surgeon for internal medicine, a computer programmer for hard drive problems, and Sarah Brady for firearms expertise.
12. The 2nd Amendment, ratified in 1787, refers to the National Guard, which was created 130 years later, in 1917.
13. The National Guard, federally funded, with bases on federal land, using federally-owned weapons, vehicles, buildings and uniforms, punishing trespassers under federal law, is a "state" militia.
14. These phrases: "right of the people peaceably to assemble," "right of the people to be secure in their homes," "enumeration's herein of certain rights shall not be construed to disparage others retained by the people," and "The powers not delegated herein are reserved to the states respectively, and to the people" all refer to individuals, but "the right of the people to keep and bear arm" refers to the state.
15. "The Constitution is strong and will never change." But we should ban and seize all guns thereby violating the 2nd, 4th, and 5th Amendments to that Constitution.
16. Rifles and handguns aren't necessary to national defense! Of course, the army has hundreds of thousands of them.
17. Private citizens shouldn't have handguns, because they aren't "military weapons", but private citizens shouldn't have "assault rifles", because they are military weapons.
18. In spite of waiting periods, background checks, finger printing, government forms, etc., guns today are too readily available, which is responsible for recent school shootings. In the 1940's, 1950's and 1960's, anyone could buy guns at hardware stores, army surplus stores, gas stations, variety stores, Sears mail order, no waiting, no background check, no fingerprints, no government forms and there were no school shootings.
19. The NRA's attempt to run a "don't touch" campaign about kids handling guns is propaganda, but the anti-gun lobby's attempt to run a "don't touch" campaign is responsible social activity.
20. Guns are so complex that special
Consider that you can't even call sparkling wine Champagne unless it comes from the Champagne area of France. If that were true in the US you wouldn't be able to get a real Philly cheese steak except one from Philly.
http://www.techcentralstation.be/091503B.html
In this instance they may not have gone that far; I would agree that you shouldn't allow competitors to use another's trademark for business purposes. However, it may not be possible for Google to check every instance. Google should just write new terms of sale for ad contracts. They should require that the buyer indemnify them for abuse of another company's trademark.
Isn't that "nissen", not "nissan"?
-monique
After reading this i'm thinking .... who gives a shit ...nobody that i know of. !!!!
*--- Sometimes a majority only means that all the fools are on the same side. ---*
Are you quoting something in your sig? If so, you ought to say so. It looks to me like you are badly misremembering a Descartes joke whose punchline is "'I think not,' he replied, and promptly vanished."
Of course then, the French government would probably cry foul and whine about that as well.
I'm a bit confused about this. Many trademarks are phrases: Red Hat Linux, Office XP, Electronic Frontier Foundation (I assume the last one's trademarked). What happens when these terms are intermixed? For example, it sounds like if I search for "Electronic Frontier Foundation", only ads from the EFF would be allowed to show. But what happens if I search for "Frontier Electronic Foundation"? How about "Linux has a Hat and is Red"? Legislation like this is just too ambiguous, and in the end, damaging.
I am not surprised by this action. The French do not have real freedom of speech/press and have been falling down the slippery slope for sometime.
-- $G
Yes my brother, the government only lies to us! Rise up against the system! The only people who know anything are the ones that say Bush is an idiot! The military is evil! Oh, and basic elementary school english is for dumb losers! It's all bullshit!
People might respect your opinions if you didn't present them like you're mentally retarded.
So if I want to search for a company which services IBM mainframes, I can't search for 'IBM' and expect to see any AdWords for the very company I'm probably looking for?? Stupid!!
MORTAR COMBAT!
Okay...unlike most I read the article and understand it's not searches but the ads people put in.
But, if I was to pay google to put an ad in for the term Microsoft that linked to Linux.com, how is google at fault? I'm the one that is using the trademarked term.
Then again, this is the same country that sued gatech because their web pages were in english, etc...
Does this mean we can finally slashdot google? The idea is that it costs more to send the webpage than it does for slashdot to host a story... and if it costs 1500 euros, that's a significant cost. Go /.? Yay, let's slashdot google?
Or, more appropriately for Slashdot, whenever Apple Computers does anything related to music, they get (successfully) sued by Apple Records.
asdfasdfasdfdsafasdfasdfadsfasdfasdfasd
Seems like the only sensible thing to do.
Granted, maybe I am missing something as I don't plan to enter a US Law School until next year, but when I studied this in Germany, I would think the same rule could apply here as well.
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
Google should just block all French IP addresses. No more trademark infringement within their jurisdiction. Problem solved.
Things like this.... that have been slowly growing.... I have this sinking sensation... that some day.... possibly soon.... the internet is going to take a new form.
.... say, jojoilovemonkeysex.com hosted in the USA will piss off the netherlands and jojoilovegorillasex.com will piss off the usa... and either will restrict each country.... and.. sooner than later the internet ends up following the "community" symptoms which are evident in everyday physical life....
This new form will be where people restrict their webservers to serve only certain countries, due to legal differences and policies that different countries hold. Yes, the current domain system makes any domain name resolvable to any nation, but, one can drop packets from any ip blocks you choose... I just have this sinking sensation that it is likely that
Does this make any sense to any of you? What do you think?
Is not life a hundred times too short for us to bore ourselves? -Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
This should not have happened under any sane trademark law. I am allowed to write a review on a product and use it's name in that review, as long as I acknowledge the trademark. If that's legal, then how can it be illegal for Google to look for such a review?
This seems to be yet another case of the government trying to take away rights in an internet context that are taken for granted for the written press.
This reminds me very much of the situation around the Intel's Secrets page a couple of years ago. Intel use trademark law to make this website impossible, because they didn't like what he was saying. If you give trademark holder the power of search engines, you will never be able to find a bad review on a product. It will also become extremely hard to organize user groups that centralize complaints, such as the one that was used to push UPC into providing some service in the Netherlands.
Consumer organisation in France have to be made aware of this situation and start to lobby.
The French "government", or executive, has no authority over court decisions.
Note that the BVP (the organization where you found this official FAQ) is a private non profit organization made by the industry for self-regulation.
As far as I know, the French government does not require advance approval for any advertisement (in fact, I remember some ministers irate at some commercials). However, broadcasters may use the BVP as a counsel to check whether advertisements are a lawsuit risk etc...
I think that many posters here, probably motivated by anti-French bigotry, and incompetent about legal issues, are missing the point.
This decision was taken by a court of Nanterre, probably the large claim court. It has not gone through an appeal before the Court of Appeals, and of course not gone to the supreme court (Cour de Cassation).
Until the Cour de Cassation has pronounced itself, it is as silly to comment on this as a "position of the French government" or as "silly laws/regulation from the French government" than it would be to comment on the "position of the United States" government from a single judgment from a US district court.
They already "filter" the words, to give you the most relevant ads. Companies pay to get their ads shown when people search for certain words, e.g. Chevrolet could pay to get their ads show when people search for Ford. This practice however is not allowed in french trademark law.
In France, only Ford (and Ford dealers) would be able to buy advertising space for their car ads to be shown when people search for the word Ford.
You get your ads at the library? Wow, you americans are really weird, here in Europe the library is one of the few places where there aren't any ads.
And yes, if I went to the library and asked for books about Intel processors, the librarian had better not give me an Apple add.
Advertising is speech. Telling Google to block certain categories of ads from French audiences is telling Google to restrict free speech. It's giving the commercial interests of certain businesses priority over free speech.
Suppose you ask your librarian for books on Intel, and he only shows you books published by Intel because of a court ruling on trademarks. If a French court expects software to engage in this kind of filtering, why wouldn't a French court apply the same precept to filtering by humans?
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
The really interesting thing about this is that trademarks are national resources, not international. If you trademark something in, say, Sweden, then that thing is trademarked in, well, Sweden.
:-)
Now, how would a global advertising activity successfully prevent company A, which is based in Kuala Lumpur, from infringing on company B:s trademark, which only exists in, say, the Outer Hebrides?
The world is international, folks. National namespaces don't work when extrapolated to the global view.
(Insert obligatory rant here about the French not caring about anything non-French anyway)
*ducks*
"I tend to think of OS X as Linux with QA and Taste", James Gosling, creator of Java
That sure sucks for google, especially considering the practice has already been upheld as legal in America. Playboy sued Netscape over the exact same thing and Netscape won.
b oy-netscape.doc
I hope my computer law teacher doesn't mind me posting this link on slashdot...heh:
http://courses.cs.vt.edu/~cs4984/computerlaw/play
I honestly can't understand how this bullshit can get modded to +5. It's a blatant uninformed troll, shame on you moderators.
Usually when /. stories are about government stepping in to stop those Big Bad Transnational Coporations, readers are frothing at the mouth to cheer on that government. Or when it's a story about an industry that isn't regulated enough we're all screaming for more regulation. Now that we see a socialist government stepping in to regulate the Internet, what happened to all the people who would normally be demanding we get this right here in the US of A since capitalism is so evil? Let this be a lesson: this is the sort of stupidity that happens when you let government run industry with its iron fist. As unplesant as unbridled industry can sometimes be, I'd gladly take the progress and inventions spawned forth from capitalist greed over the stagnant ineptitude of socialist beaurocrats, as seen in France.
"The State is that great fiction by which everyone lives at the expense of everyone else." -Frederic Bastiat.
I've had it up to here with those french and their stupied laws. What the hell is wrong with those people, every time they out-perform their previous stupidity, enough already!
before you know it they will be demandig google to change their name into something like - le premier cherseur des mots dans la resaux de monde - and let them translate all results in french by default.
On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.
Sorry for any confusion.
There's so little difference between politics and jihad lately...
this is going to be the most expensive slashdotting ever ... (try and tell me you didn't click on that link!)
...
you slashdot guys are so good to us - you figured we'd want that warm fuzzy feeling from having just cost someone a shitload of money from doing nothing but that we'd be too lazy to actually goto google and type it in ourselves
with the i-opener we actually had to go out and buy the things, now we get to bring a company to its knees just by clicking a link
my new sig's going to be:
click here and google losses $1500
This UID is 7651 digits too high to subjectively infer IQ from.
Well, as a French guy, I can tell you it is not. French government is really that bad, stupid and irresponsible.
Write boring code, not shiny code!
I'm posting late but here's some useful info. Claiming exclusive rights to trademark terms is nothing new. It's a policy followed by google, overture, did-it, and most other pay per click engines & arbitrage companies. Today in google adwords, an Advertiser (ex Honda) can have google remove someone's ad if they see the word Honda being used by an unauthorized person. It's common for say Kawasaki to buy the word Honda - the end result being a user searches for Honda, finds a Honda ad, clicks on that ad and goes to Kawasaki.com. Obviously this is a bad. Also - Honda may want to bid on its own name and in doing so Honda should not need to compete to buy its own word. If I am Honda then I want the lowest CPC possible - paying a high CPC because thousands of other people are bidding on my trademark term is not reasonable. Here are two examples supporting the courts decision to uphold trademarks via search. Supporting trademakers is definetly in your best interests if you are the owner.
I'd mod you up if I had points, and I'd add you to my friends list if I knew who you were. Good post.
That or we could sponsor the French space program.
Admit it, rather have them on the moon than across the Atlantic.
(s/Atlantic/channel/ if you're British, s/the Atlantic/Belgium/ if you're Dutch like me, work out your own variations)