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Google Ruled a Trademark Infringer
Stephan writes "Google lost a trademark-infringement case in France.
News.com is reporting that a Paris District Court ruled
yesterday against Google in a
lawsuit filed by high-end fashion designer Louis Vuitton. The company
is suing Google for allowing its competitors to buy targeted ads on the
search engine's search results pages that use or are associated with the Vuitton
trademark. The court charged Google with trademark counterfeiting, unfair
competition and misleading advertising. Google was ordered to pay $257,430
(200,000 euros). Google is facing
similar lawsuits in different countries. In the United States, the company
recently
won a favorable ruling in a similar case brought by GEICO, the car insurance
company."
Simple Solution:
Stop google in france and change google.fr to that picture of chirac shaking hussein's hand.
F'ing french.
Listen you Firefox, Linux zealots. One day you're going to wake up from this dream. A dream where you're David, fighting against the the Goliath Microsoft and realize it was nothing more than a fantasy. You'll be old, frail and near death, realizing that you've wasted your life fighting a battle that should have never been fought.
Hell, 90% of you would have never touched a computer had it not been for Microsoft.
Oh, and that huge burst of Firefox downloads a few months back? Guess what, 80% have switched back to IE.
Says who, froggy-fag?
Do these sorts of suits strike anyone else as utterly ridiculous ?
I mean has anyone seen any pepsi/coke ads lately ? They feature their competitors unabashedly. I know it's not quite the same thing, but the premise is ridiculous: "No one should hear about the competitor's products when ours are mentioned". I mean sure, that's nice to have it that way and all, but it seems a tad silly, no?
On the charges: Unfair competition ? What exactly IS that ? And how is google at all competing directly w/ Louis Vuitton?
Counterfeits.. Ok, this is just clearly a trumped up charge because L.V. doesnt like competition from other brands, just another thing to throw in the charge-pot. I mean if people are gonna buy high end fashion, they're likely not gonna accept substitutes (the whole thing is silly, but w/e).
Misleading advertising ? I mean sure, they're advertising for the competitor.. but misleading ? What are they saying that's false?
On the other hand, it's France, and its a french company (Louis Vuitton) against an american company (Google)... so it's not like there's any political bias or anything either. Another suit in France w/ "Le Meridien Hotels" went the same way. Hmmmmmmm. Notice that a similar american suit went google's way.
What do I suggest to stop this sort of sillyness ? Anyone who goes after google like this should quite simply have their pages removed from the index. "Got a problem with our system? then you dont need to be in it, goodbye". Now THAT is a strong deterrent. Those whiny bastards would think twice.
Google should just ban all of France from using its search engine. After all, many phrases searched can be argued as trademark infringement. This only opens the floodgate for more nonsense.
Maybe I should trademark a popular search term and sue Google too.
eTrade SUCKS
How the f$ck is this trandemark infringement?
You thought a French court would find in favor of an American company?
Education is a better safeguard of liberty than a standing army.
Edward Everett (1794 - 1865)
French Freaks.
My Pooopooo perfume.. ahh weee wee..
...block all French ISP's.
Actually the grandparent was being nice with "planned". The word he was looking for was "Marxist".
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.