Slashdot Mirror
Google "Loses" Gmail in Europe
Hippie Hippie Shake writes to mention that Google has just lost the right to use the name 'Gmail' in Europe, according to the EU. "Daniel Giersch, a German-born 32-year old entrepreneur, has just announced that his company received a positive ruling last week from the Harmonization Office supporting his claim that "Gmail" and his own "G-mail" are confusingly similar. G-mail is a German service that provides a "gmail.de" email address, but also allows for a sort of "hybrid mail" system in which documents can be sent electronically, printed out by the company, and delivered in paper format to local addresses." It looks like "Google Mail" from here on out, at least in the Old Country."
and slashdot smells it! news at 11!
Daniel Giersch, a German-born 32-year old entrepreneur, has just announced that his company received a positive ruling last week from the Harmonization Office supporting his claim that "Gmail" and his own "G-mail" are confusingly similar.
That's not something a few hundred million dollars can't fix.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
Congratulations Daniel. Looks like in EU at least the David can defeat Goliath.
"Daniel Giersch, a German-born 32-year old entrepreneur, has just announced that his company received a positive ruling last week from the Harmonization Office supporting his claim that "Gmail" and his own "G-mail" are confusingly similar."
Translation -
"Daniel Giersch, a German-born 32-year old entrepreneur, has just announced"
That he is now G-Uber Rich!
It could be worse, it could be Monday.
I think this is the first time Ive ever heard of where a company has succesfully been challenged and lost the right to a name while a product was still in "beta". Its already Google Mail in the UK, no? I wonder if this large a swath of the world will cause google to just rebrand the whole thing google mail for everyone, just for continuity and branding's sake. As much as I like the name Gmail and would be sad to have to say something longer all the time, it does look to my first cursory glance like this was a legit claim as opposed to cybersquatting, so perhaps its the right thing.
...because he legitimately had use of the G-mail term in advance. But if he's smart, he'll either capitalize on the name recognition and make a really nice mail portal system, or sell to Google. Providing a somehow "inferior" product under that name might not work out so well in the long run.
From the article:
Giersch, who said in an interview last year that "Google's behavior is very threatening, very aggressive and very unfaithful, and to me, it's very evil."Of course, very few people would describe lawyers on the other side of the courtroom with any 'nice' adjectives, especially lawyers working for a Goliath of a US corporation. Saying 'very evil' is a bit of a strech.
The @googlemail addresses are too long and clumsy. I made use of a US based proxy when I signed up for my account to ensure I'd get the more succinct gmail version. Bloody Germans.
Well, okay, so I jumped the gun a bit, but removing all search results for gmail in Europe would be funny.
I heard about this quite a while ago. A quick google search reveals: Gmail Trademark in Dispute (if you don't want to click it, it's an article on the subject dated August 12, 2004). This may be another instance of someone claiming rights to it, but it certainly isn't the first place Google has lost the GMail trademark.
Well, that's the way the cookie crumbles. As has been suggested elsewhere, perhaps Google can simply buy him? I wonder how much it's worth to them.
-John Mark
Hyperic Community Outreach
Hyperic Community Manager
Article says he was offered $250K [wonder if that's cash?]... damn I'd sold. Used the money to tour the world, then apply for a job at Google.de
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
Well, they might rebrand it, but people are going to go nuts if they actually change the email addresses in other countries away from "gmail.com" ones; so regardless of whether it says "Google Mail" or "Gmail" at the top of the page, GMail is what most folks in English speaking countries are going to call it, I suspect.
Really, I think that Google is just going to wait a while, and then once the media coverage has disappeared, buy this guy's domain. Having "gmail.cc" for every other First World CC in the world except DE, just isn't going to fly; they need that domain, and now it's just going to be a lot of negotiation to work out a price.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
"Daniel Giersch, a German-born 32-year old entrepreneur, has just announced that his company received a positive ruling last week from the Harmonization Office supporting his claim that "Gmail" and his own "G-mail" are confusingly similar.
So when his rather stupid venture tanks (several people have tried his kind of service before), he can at least get some money for the domain name.
I'm sorry, but I just can't take seriously any ruling made by the "Harmonization Office." Is that the same German ministry that issued the mandate about being especially nice to children? Oh well, we all know he's just going to eventually sell the domain to Google anyway. Resistence (to the cash) will be futile.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Seems there's been a lot of heat around Google.de lately.
On the bright side for the new owner, one had to wonder if he'll simply attempt to sell the domain, or keep it for his own G-Mail app.
Considering the amount of incoming links, that has to be the best SEO deal ever!
Instead of 'g' for Google, they could use 'e' for Europe - and call it something like E-mail or somesuch.
This being slashdot, I was surprised the article wasn't entitled 'Google "looses" Gmail in Europe'.
I'm glad to see that some courts are coming to their senses and realizing that sticking a "G" or "i" in front of something doesn't necessarily make it a trademark.
Care about privacy? Read this!
mailg
googlem
goomail
ggmail
omgmail
I think GGmail would be great. WTF GG! Too bad it appears to be a Gorgeous Girls mailing list. Ok, then goomail is my second choice... mm goooooooo mail. (almost like moomail)
Many are over-looking the fact that trademarks and procedure, collected under an independent title for said documents, with an independently assumed trademark that is not derived or conferred from another, is fair to proceed given their unique merits. GMail is everywhere; it's in the trees, it's with Google Mail, it's with a (G)Hermanian, and it is lawful to continue the lawful use of said trademark as long as not intending to interrupt or defraud another's regular use.
In other words, that GMail collected and utilized on the 31-st Day of the first Month in the Year 2007 at 1324 and 987-miliseconds+ATOMIC_TIMESTAMP from MAIL.GOOGLE.COM does not infringe or detract from this GMail collected and utilized on the 31-st Day of the first Month in the Year 2007 at 1324 and 987-miliseconds+ATOMIC_TIMESTAMP from GMAIL.DE. The same goes for the nonsense of people forcing their IP and trademark to compel with threats/duress/coercion for a lawful man of the Hershey or (Mike)Rowe family to change their name to somthing that isn't seen as similar (yet independent) of a name adapted to a corporation.
Does anyone remember about Blizzard persuance upon anyone seen using Starcraft(tm) or similar IP, without question of independance, yet they are injunctioned at all from pursuing the trademark helled by a reacreational vessel and off-land vessel company Starcraft? This is the same agreement between ministries over subject matter, that there are many men out there given the name "Gregory Thomas" yet this one given to me is timestamped 04/20/xxxx and is lawful for use in my matter.
without prejudice
Dude, lay off the amphetamines, for crissakes.
I read that though twice and it's still making little to no sense.
just buy the guy out? His service sounds like something they would like to provide anyway.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
"That he is now G-Uber Rich!"
That should be: "That he is now a Rich Goober!".
We could try goomail, but I don't think anyone wants that in their inbox..
Just call it Google GMail. Problem solved. No confusion whatsoever.
So the courts are taking the view that trademarks and domain names occupy the same space? How else can one interpret the ruling that one company's trademark (G-mail) takes precedence over another company's domain name (gmail.com).
Perhaps you should consider the fact that Europe and the US have different laws and systems of law? US Common Law is very different from European "Roman" civil law. Some issues are covered by international conventions and agreements. But this is an issue for german domestic law. Especially considering the fact that gmail.de existed prior to any Google application for a German trademark.
And if you posted that in duplicate, it still wouldn't conflict with the prior post made on Wednesday January 31, @06:54PM with the record #17835574. Look at all the Intellectual Property attached to the Slashdot-chartered corporate-sole known as Anonymous. Please be more accurate to your request; I can use more operators if you like: for justice, and logical sentence flow.
without prejudice
I suspicion that Google will just *outright* buy Germany in its entirety. They will then hand the boy a toothbrush as make him clean poopers, all the while making him chat "I will not embarrass my uberfuhrher in public again."
Gmail = 3:2 consonant/vowel ratio. That's not good enough for a German catchphrase anyway!
This is BS. How does this affect gmail.com, registered in the US? As far as I can see, anyone anywhere in the world can sign up a gmail.com account without prejudice. The company is based in the US; they're not marketing gmail.de, it's gmail.com. It's not even g-mail.com. How can the EU prevent its citizens using gmail.com, and require that they use g-mail.de (or whatever) instead?
Hope thats not as bad as being bought out by Microsoft
http://michaelsmith.id.au
Is it just me or does the "Harmonization Office" sound like something straight out of a George Orwell novel? Its name vaguely reminds me of the Ministry of Peace from Nineteen Eighty-Four. Should we call it HarmOff in Newspeak?
1) There are ongoing disputes still in court. This is not the end of the story
... und die Post geht richtig ab!" whole slogan WITH hyphen.
2) according to discussions on heise.de this guy has probably registered his trademark between the start of gmail.com and the time google wanted to register gmail.de, they DO own g-mail.de
3) the trademark actually is "G-Mail
4) German trademark law DOES provide ways to see if registering was in "bad faith", and that is not dealt with in the EU, but Germany. That could turn the whole story.
5) He DOES NOT provide service. What he announced is "ready next month" for like all the years since he registered the domain. Probably vaporware.
6) Registering a trademark s.o. else is using in another country and designing vaporware is what 4) is about: straight way to lose the tm.
Some people also told he sort of knew that gmail in the internet was "taken", but discussions did not provide promised sources and no one at heise.de jumped in.
All in all looks like david-goliath, but also symicron-explorer so stay tuned. But keep in mind actual deals of Mr. Giersch are tell tale by himself and not at all confirmed. He might just be some greedy jerk with a rip off scam in trademark law.
Actually, Giersch's trademarked string in full length is "G-Mail ...und die Post geht richtig ab".
...it really kicks ass", playing on the meaning of the phrase "die Post geht ab" = "it kicks ass" and "Post" = "(snail) mail".
This is a pretty lame phrase translating approximately to "G-Mail
Due to the fact that his trademark in principle only covers the full length of the phrase, his standing in courts is not as strong as he pretends, and his registering was very close to google's announcement of their gmail service. His trademark is still challenged in court.
Also, Giersch's company is in "we'll launch very soon, honest!" state for years now, the only progress being in regularly changing website designs. This is not as clear a "innocent David" vs. "corporate Goliath" situation as people outside of Germany tend to see. To me, this guy more looks like our very own tiny SCO.
Again the creation of top level domains was flawed.
.com .net etc to .com.us and .net.us.
.us centric. In your browser you type in the URL slashdot.com and the browser will autmatically append .us. However the URL will still appear as slashdot.com. It's completely transparent for .us users.
.de centric. When they want to visit gmail.com, the browser would direct them to gmail.com.de. IF they want to visit google mail, they would need to type in gmail.com.us.
.us centric. You will still type in gmail.com and that will direct you to gmail.com.us.
:) ).
.yahoo.com.[code] in every country OR they pay firefox to set the country centric code to .us ... and we have the same system as we do now. Nice!
Here's what they should have done.
1) All top level domains end in 2 letter country codes and move all the
2) So what would happen with slashdot.com after it got moved to slashdot.com.us?
You first set your browser's country code. Most of us reading this would set this
Now if we look at this gmail example, users from germany would set their browser to be
HOWEVER, say you're an american travelling in germany with your laptop. Well since your browser is set to act as
Ahhhh how elegant a solution and it will be completely transparent for Americans (I will sell this idea for 1 paypal penny $US
It makes it harder for google/yahoo to dominate the world cause they would want to purchase
I think this is an appropriate sacrifice for the decrease in lawsuits between countries and domain names.
The domain appears to have been extent prior to 25 Feb 2004.
... a bit more info please.
http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://gmail.de
However, the first two archived pages are error messages so it's not clear if this was being used for an email service. If this was a registered trade mark then it wouldn't matter as the Nice Classification for marks is Telecoms (which surely encompasses websites) - I'm not sure how it works with unregistered marks though.
http://oami.europa.eu/CTMOnline from OHIM (the European TM registry) shows the earliest registration of "gmail" to be by Google Inc. 14/Apr/2004.
As I understand it though, at least in Europe, you have to protect a mark (to maintain it as an designation of origin of goods or service) otherwise you lose your rights to it.
In summary
[/troll]
Any evil corporation worth a damn would have squashed this little problem in a week!
EU gmail should change its name to GUmail.
They lawyers are "evil" but he says that for a reason. These are the BRIGHTEST PEOPLE ON EARTH, and they will eat you alive, no joke. He would have been wise to program the mail service himeself or hire someone to do it (80 hours for a small scale system). Right now is the time to settle for the 250k or whatever they are offering now considering the judgement IMO...
I've read Slashdot for the last 5 years, and now I start posting... Go figure
Hello, I am a European GMail user. I'll just say that if, because Daniel Giersch wants to be rich, the quality of my GMail goes down, I'll go after him...
Initially, Mr. Giersch only wanted to break the monopoly of the German Post Office (German Post). But he had to learn the hard way that it's hard to compete in that market, much less make a living on it. Until somewhat recently, the domain gmail.de did not belong to Mr. Girsch but to another German who has little to do with Mr. Giersch, and whatever you see on gmail.de regarding emails now has been added only very recently to back up the claims that Google is somehow infringing on Mr. Giersch's trademak that is listed as "G-Mail - ... und die Post geht richtig ab".
Giersch does not really have much of a case, and Google does not seem too keen on throwing their money at him. Which is very understandable.
WHAT A STUPID IDEA!!!!!!!!!1
Those damn Americans. Arbitrary suing is the only aspect of their culture they take seriously.
Oh wait, this is a case of Europeans suing Americans over a name that they may have a chance to capitalize off of thanks to Google. Well that's cool.
Funny person this Mr Daniel Giersch... So he fights google for some rights (or is it money?) but then on one of his zillion websites (http://www.soundofmonaco.com/) he uses google ads. So much for his philosophy of integrity (http://www.giersch.com/rel/index.php4?top=02).
:-)
Ah I know I am just ranting... but anyway, I had too
Want to be in europe? Use gmail.eu!
Europe is not a country and referred to as the old world (together with asia and africa).
Larry Seite: Was passiert?
Sergej Brin: Jemand setzte uns hoch die Patentrechte!
Erich Schmidt: Wir kriegen Klage.
Larry Seite: Was!
Erich Schmidt: Hauptanwalt dreh an.
Larry Seite: Es bist du!!
Deutschnaziuberbösewicht: Wie seid ihr,
Guugel? Deutschnaziuberbösewicht: All eure DENIC Einträge sind gehören zu uns.
Deutschnaziuberbösewicht: Ihr seid auf dem Weg zu Patentklage.
Larry Seite: Was du sagst !!!
Deutschnaziuberbösewicht: Ihr habt keine Chance zu überleben macht eure Zeit.
Deutschnaziuberbösewicht: LACH LACH LACH LACH
scnr
My gmail.com address will continue to work, even though I am in Germany.
Because if I have to convince everyone to write out "googlemail" in the future (let alone all the GPG issues that come with it), there's trouble.
If GMail is out and if googlemail is too long to type, how about... goomail ? :)
The above post reads like one of those spams that has autogenerated paragraphs of text pasted together from news reports, Great Expectations and the U.S. Constitution.
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
First he takes over his own country, then Europe and next ze vorld!
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
What's next?
Google Earth instead of GEarth?
Google Maps instead of GMaps?
Google News instead of GNews?
But... wait...
Don't you mean...Old Continent?!
maybe you should consult with the US's Department of Homeland Security about Old Europe culture.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Hi, Slashdot. I'd just like to point out that there's a significant difference between "Europe" and "EU". Please don't redefine "European". That's newspeak. Thanks.