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New Legal Threat To GMail

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the stuff-you-can't-make-up dept.

wellington writes "Google is facing a renewed threat of legal action from a company that claims to own the intellectual property rights to its GMail e-mail service. Independent International Investment Research, a British company that specialises in research and has several leading City investment banks as clients, argues that it launched "G-Mail web based email" in May 2002."

6 of 526 comments (clear)

  1. Intellectual property rights to GMail? by Itchy+Rich · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Surely this is just trademark infringment at most. The summary seems to infer that general IP rights to the service are involved, rather than just the name.

  2. Sounds legitimate by brucmack · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Sounds like they have a legitimate claim here... They did launch a web-based email service called GMail well before Google. The fact that they've been negotiating with Google for the past 15 months would indicate that they also brought their claim to Google early on. I wonder why Google hasn't just paid them to license the name? Wouldn't they rather use some of their excess money reserves than risk a tarnished name?

  3. Re:Fair's fair... by Professeur+Shadoko · · Score: 5, Insightful

    zero ?

    and what about the ads ?

    free != zero-profit.

  4. Vague Summary by aussie_a · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Wow, yet another vague summary, that can definitely be misleading. Having first read the summary, I thought it was about a company claiming to have created the code and/or services of Gmail only to have google steal it. But no, the company is merely sueing for trademark infringement. Way to go slashdot! The word "TRADEMARK" could have been mentioned somewhere in the article, would have cleared it up a tiny bit. But I guess Slashdot gets more pageviews (and ad views) by confusing its readers.

  5. From TFA... by Foobar+of+Borg · · Score: 5, Insightful
    He [Mr. Smith] said he was "reluctantly" considering taking legal action against Google, which could involve his family trust selling shares in the group to fund the claim.

    "I feel it is up to me as the founder and the major shareholder. We're not going to sit on the sidelines while a company uses our intellectual property rights," he said. "We're confident that we have the funding available to us and we're girding our loins," he said.

    As much as they may have a case, I always find the "we don't want to, but they are forcing us" argument funny. Not because of the company itself, but because I can imagine some IP lawyers saying, "Yesss! They are being forccced to! Hisss!" as their forked tongues flick from their mouths and they rub thier greedy paws together with reptilian glint in their eyes.

    --
    Similar to the upcoming US election results
  6. gmail.com by bookemdano63 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    But they never bother spending the $10 to register gmail.com?