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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 $257,430
(200,000 euros). Google is facing
similar lawsuits in different countries. In the United States, the company
recently
won a favorable ruling in a similar case brought by GEICO, the car insurance
company."
How the f$ck is this trandemark infringement?
Pedro offers you his protection
Could somebody tell me why this is diffrent than on comericals when say Subway uses The whatever-selects. McDonalds own that. Or then McDonalds compairs to Burger Kings wooper? I3 onion rings
Trademark counterfeiting? I really don't see this as being the case. Google is simply a tool by which various links are collected and set out in a presentable manner. Instead of shooting the messenger (Google), it seems to me that a more fair ruling would be to go after the counterfeitters themselves.
Unfair competition? I thought France had a relatively free market? And what exactly *is* "unfair competition" anyway? This aspect of the ruling seems as though it's set out to protect French business interests more than anything else.
Misleading advertising? Once again, it's the advertisers doing the misleading, not Google.
Many Bothans died to bring you this sig.
IMHO, this is a pretty bogus ruling. The ads are distinct from the regular results and marked as such, so there's little grounds for any of the typical trademark "confusion" statues to apply. I don't think that this case would pass muster in a US court.
In short, I fail to see how Google selling Louis Vuitton adwords to LV's competitors is any different than State Farm putting up billboards across the street from Geico offices or Viagra buying an ad on the page after a Cialis article in Men's magazine. It's nothing more than good business sense. It isn't TM infringement.
Stallman likes to point out that the term "Intellectual Property" is a fallacy in the sense that copyright, patents, and trademarks are very different things that need to be discussed seperately. But one can at least identify one problem that they are all suffering from: courts and lawmakers forgetting their actual purpose, and treating them like they exist to protect incumbant companies.
In the case of Trademark, it's purpose is not to protect companies that take out trademarks, but to protect _consumers_. The point with trademark is that if I want a Coca-Cola, or a Louis-Vuitonn bag, I can be sure that what I buy is actually such a product, and not a cheap knock-off. Without trademark laws, it would be next to impossible to know what you are buying. That this leads to brands with incredible value is entirely incidental, and possibly not entirely positive.
So, in this context, the ruling could not be more stupid. How does it, in any way, hurt the consumer that competitors can advertise under queries for Louis-Vuitonn? As long as the ads are clearly marked as being adds for somebody else (as they are on Google), this will only increase competition and give the consumer more choice.
One can understand why Louis-Vuitton might not like that, but the role of the courts ought not be to do their bidding!
So the french government is now dictating what results a search engine can produce? If someone is injecting a query into my system, I would expect that I could return whatever information I want, unless the information in and of itself was illegal. For example when I click "similar pages" link at google for amazon.com and I get an overstock.com link is that illegal? Aren't I free to make whatever associations I want, possibly with the exception of when implying a false relationship? Google ads are marked as such even though many people can't tell the difference - there clearly is no direct relationship between the search query and the ads. Even so, who is to say that by default a search engine's results imply a particular relationship to the search terms?
It is not the fault of the technology, but users that are just plain confused. This ruling will look incredibly dumb in a generation or two when people are generally more saavy.
Google could remove ads + indexed pages. Those who sue Google are not worth it to be found ;)
There is no anti-americanism in France, it's just a stupid court order. As for the nazi Yahoo auctions, it's just that Europe has a different version of what is free speech, which is comprehensible from a geographical point of view: Germany (with the Hitler guy) is in Europe.
Of course I don't pretend I can explain this court order, but it has absolutely nothing to do with the USA, GWB, the Irak war, the Nazis or an international Jewish/Freemasonry conspiracy, just some trademark issues.
when google takes them out of their search results. After all why risk another lawsuit when someone else will gladly take those hits.
--Gentoo Baby!
The fact that they are messed up to begin with...France is irrelevant.
That's rather extreme. Just because the French state has different political views and opinions to you, doesnt mean they are any less valid. We don't know enough about the case to judge whether or not their was any bias, so jumping to these sort of conclusions is not particularly helpful.
I'm not stressed. I'm just terribly, terribly alert.
comparative advertising being one of them
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
That is copyright infringment no matter what way you look at it.
Well, actually is it trademark infringement depending on how you look at it. I wouldn't say this case is clear cut. I'm sure you've seen many commercials on television that make direct comparisons. Recently, I've seen a commercial that compares Liquid Plumber and Drano. I can't remember who ran the commercial but the advertisers mention both products by name. And advertisements of this nature have gone on for decades.
Sometimes you might be shopping and you'll see a product that says "Compare to Brand X". This isn't trademark infringement. A trademark does not give you exclusive use of a term, it simply prevents others from using your trade likeness to sell their product.
If I had a shipping company called SpedEx, I'd probably be found in violated of FedEx's trademark. But if I had a shipping company called DHL, I could certainly say that I provided an alternative to FedEx. Recall the DHL commercial where the UPS and the FedEx trucks are sitting opposite each other at a train crossing as a train full of DHL trucks sped by.
Further, wouldn't it be dangerous if trademark law made it "illegal" for databases (of which Google is) to connect like entities. If you have a large amount of data, is it wrong to connect like brands so that one can understand their relationship. Because they certainly have a relationship.
If this case were to permeate international trademark law, it would overturn decades of precedent. This type of thing happens all the time. Just yesterday, I purchased "Lysol Toilet Bowl Cleaner". Upon leaving the checkout, I recieved a coupon for $1 off "The Works Bowl Cleaner". Clearly, "The Works" is paying for a targeted advertisement for me to recieve a coupon when I purchase a competing product.
Would it be okay if a TV station let an advertiser infringe upon a trademark?
If they knowingly did so, then it might be a problem. But can a TV station be held responsible for every commercial? Station traffic managers aren't trademark attorneys. They schedule commercials. The ultimate responsibility should lie with the advertiser. It is the advertiser's message, not the TV station. If I rented you a PA system and you somehow broke some sort of law (say copyright law, by reading a copyright book outloud), should I be held responsible because I provided the means or the forum for you to break the law? I don't think so. Should the ISP be help responsible when you perform something illegal with your connection? I hope not, because then they'll watch everything you do.
I suspect that in the end, this type of advertising will be considered legal and legitimate.
You said it man. Nobody f#%ks with the Jesus.
LV is trying to claim that Google, a company which is not beholden to them, has somehow diluted their trademark by associating other companies with it. However, if google didn't index pages linking to them, or their pages, then they wouldn't come up at all. When X is the amount of business driven to LV by google, and Y is the percentage of that business lost by people buying competing (and sometimes knockoff) products, Losing Y percent of X still leaves you with infinitely more profit from that source than you paid for.
In other words, google is a free resource and they have no right to bitch about what ads are shown along google searches for their trademark.
The counterargument is probably that because google is ubiquitous in search, they have an unfair position in the market from which to do things like this. However, they are anything but a monopoly, so that argument really doesn't wash - especially since it's not illegal to sell LV and a competing product in the same store (unless the competing product is illegal anyway) so it makes no sense to make it illegal to mention them together on the same web page. But then, most legal systems since Hammurabi are not based on what makes sense for the most people.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
barely legal.
" The comparative advertising is rarely used in France because its conditions are very strict and the limit with the unfair and denigrating advertising is quickly passed over."
http://www.chaillot.com/En/pages/p9.html
so, google crossed the line.
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
The parent article is awfully misleading. Our legal systems differ on trademarks enforcement, and google fell in a trap it should have avoided by simply asking a competent local lawyer. Who's concerned ? google.FR ; why ? so-called anti-americanism ? Bullshit. We've got cases of the very same nature dating back to the 19th century between french firms. Google pobably thought they could come down there and do business as they see fit, but we're not a 3rd world country, and you can't bribe judges to twist the law. It has nothing to see with governement either.
So what's it all about ? Unfair competition. It has been ruled for over a 100 years that it is a civil wrong for a company to use the efforts made by another firm to promote its trademarks. Little example : A has a trademark 'a' ; B pays 'wall mart' for, whenever a consummer wants 'a' product, to give him a discount on 'b' product, or advertize 'b'. Why ? because B is in fact capitalizing on the money A spent to have 'a' trademark known to the public, without paying back A for this effort, thus 'stealing' it from A. 'wall mart' is wrongfully getting a profit out of it either.
The case of YP is different, because when one checks the YP, it looks for a type of good or service, and the YP comprehensively lists all the places you can find one, in alphabetical order, and no discrimination ; you can't check the YP for a trademark.
You may have a different opinion in the USoA, but know what ? We don't care.
Since most of the folks here are in America, they tend to respond with American ways of thinking. For the record, I'm a US citizen with 11 years of service in the US Navy and I am a disabled vet.
A good example of how France handled the case can be seen in how many cars are marketed in Europe. In the US, every vehicle is compared to the competition (ex: The Ford F250 has more towing power than a Chevy pickup, has more legroom than a Dodge pickup, and has better rims than the Toyota Tundra). This is not allowed in Europe. They can extoll the virtues of their own vehicles without dragging in other manufacturers products. To an informed consumer, both methods are silly, since they're all based on lies, damn lies and statistics.
Therefore, one is not allowed to use someone else's trademark in advertising in most European countries. This seems to be the spot where Google got in trouble. While it can be argued that Google was only the messenger, they actually made money from selling the key adwords that were trademarked. I think this is where they got hit, since they made a profit from the dealing. If they didn't charge for keywords, they probably would have avoided the fine. Perhaps if they change their adwords to kill trademarked names and separate the first and last names as different words, instead of the phrase "Louis V..." use "Louis" "Vuitton" "handbag", they could get away with it, but with this on the books I'd be extra cautious. As someone else pointed out, hire a lawyer and get legal in most of Europe - pay less than the 250K they were fined. Good insurance, IMHO.
"First things first, but not necessarily in that order."
- Doctor Who
"Are you nuts? They have the trademark over the name. Period. In all uses."
Not at all, that seems to be a common misconception!
Apple (Jobs) owns the trademark in computers, but Apple (beatles) own the trademark in records. Even then there may be several owners of the trademark since different markets can have different owners.
The trademark protection is only for the market they are in and only for the product the mark covers.
I agree with the rest of your post though, Google still have to deliver the best result possible regardless of who they are pissed at.