Google Loses Gmail Trademark Case

amigoro writes "A court in Germany today banned Google from using the name 'Gmail' for its popular webmail service following a trademark suit filed by the founder of G-Mail. Daniel Giersch, started using the name G-Mail in 2000, four years before Google released 'Gmail'. "Google infringed the young businessman's trademark that had been previously been registered," said the Hanseatic Higher Regional Court in its judgement."

Comments

G, Really?

[Seumas]

I'm sure laws like this will change over time. After all in an increasingly global market, you can't afford for your trademark to be diluted by having a different name in each of six different geographical regions. I'm sure that someday the WTO will have something arranged so that the guy producing the most benefit from the trademark will win. If you came up with the trademark (or a copyrighted idea) twenty years ago and are using it to generate a million dollars in business per year, you have to surrender it to the bigger company who comes along and is making a billion dollars per year off of it.

I would think that would fall into the whole imminent domain concept that they use to justify taking part of your property to build a strip mall or expand a road. Likewise, a billion dollars of business in your economy is more important to society than some piddly million dollar business using the same concept or trademark.

Sad, but . . . I think that might be in our future.

Re:Legitimate Case?

[loganrapp]

Exactly. This was a case of poor planning. Not that hard to go, "okay, let's make sure that gmail isn't taken in all the major NA and European countries. Oh, dude in Germany? Well, let's make him an offer."

Something tells me they could have made an early offer that both parties would have been happy with - I mean, dude could make millions just by luck of naming something with a letter. But instead, Google just goes ahead with it and tries to fix it after the fact. Not necessarily evil, just crappy planning and then a desperate attempt to fix it.

I wonder if they even tried the carrot before they used the stick. Maybe they made an offer and the guy wanted more. No excuse for what they're doing, but I'm curious.

Re:sort of makes me wish

[innocent_white_lamb]

I saw a guy a short while ago whose actual email included "NOSPAM", as in "joeblowNOSPAM@example.com". You have to include the NOSPAM in his address because that's really part of it. I thought it was a very clever idea; he told me that he gets very little spam.