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)."

Comments

Re: Copyright != Trademark (was: "A, an, the?")

[Hank Reardon]

It's trademarked names they're dealing with. You can't copyright a word, you can trademark a word , image or phrase in regards to a certain market segment.

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.

Re:Screw them.

[Anonymous Coward]

What french xenophobia has to do with this ?

Would you agree about M$ paying for false *BSD ads on Google linking to their sites ? This ruling is all about that.

Re:Insanity!

[brianosaurus]

Actually if there was a guy named "Ford" who opened a Toyota dealership named "Ford's Cars", that would very likely be a trademark infringement and would be banned by trademark law. Since in your example Ford (the guy) and Ford (the big company) are both in the same business, naming his car dealership "Ford" would most likely be found to be delibreately misleading.

On the other hand, if someone named "Bob" opened up a Ford dealership named "Bobs Totally-Awesome Car World", I can see no reason that he shouldn't be allowed to purchase an ad on Google when people search for "Ford" (the car, the man, whatever).

That is insane.

Re:Because they are doing buisness in france

[loucura!]

No, their servers are in California. So business transactions should be governed under US and Californian law. Not under the law of the nation of the customer. At least in an ideal world... it should be.