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French Designer Ordered to Give up milka.fr

Posted by timothy on from the you-must-give-up-your-milka dept.

jmf writes "The BBC is running a story about French designer Milka Budumir, who has been ordered by a judge to give up milka.fr to Kraft Foods. You can read her side of the story (in French) at her site which also points to Kraft's side of the story. Kraft make very good chocolate, but they seem to be colour-blind: claiming that this website's colour is similar to this one's."

2 of 462 comments (clear)

  1. Not a designer by Max+von+H. · · Score: 5, Informative

    Milka Budumir isn't a designer... She's just a seamstress who got her name / domain name given to her by her son for her birthday. It's not like she has a brand to defend ; OTOH she's not causing Kraft any harm.

    Thing is, in France, trademark law will prevail when it comes to .fr domain names, which were only available to registered companies with a trademark brand name (you had to show paperwork), which certainly explains this ruling.

    Country TLDs ownership rules differ from country to country, unlike the usual .com .org .net .info .biz so don't scream if you haven't read the legal mumbojumbo above the "I agree" button!

    --
    -- It's always darker before it goes pitch black.
  2. Translation: by elgatozorbas · · Score: 5, Informative
    The French text says that Milka complained that the colours of her website looked too much like theirs. They did not negotiate, but gave her an ultimatum [to give the site to them, it becomes clear later].

    At the moment their "friendly" solution is to pay for the costs of taking the domain milka.fr from the lady and offering her milkacouture.fr, which is useless to her, because her clients don't know it. She also does not understand why they complain, because she did not do them any damage. Milka claims there is a link between the ladies site and www.food.fr, whish sells pizzas in Valence.

    She also says that her site will not lead away internetters who look for the chocolate company, because she only appears as 41th on search engines.

    She concludes to say that KRAFT never wanted the best for both parties, and only wanted her to give up the domain name, and only after a struggle of 2 years they are prepared to reimburse her the costs she has made.