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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.
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.
"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.
Well, this ruling would only apply to gmail.de, right? It seems unlikely that it would apply to gmail.com, as well.
;)
In that case, German Gmail users suffer - of course, given how EU laws work, European Gmail users suffer.
Secondly, the services provided are quite different (similar to Apple Records and Apple Computer, pre-Apple, Inc. of course).
But you're probably right. There is no problem that large amounts of moolah can't solve.
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.
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!
Actually he made quite a lot of money from his ventures - so this is not the typical scam!
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.
Just call it Google GMail. Problem solved. No confusion whatsoever.
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.
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...
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 ? :)
Of course, most people even here are using the
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...
If I had mod points - you'd be getting +1 insightful!!
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.
Claus