Slashdot Mirror
Google To Be Sued in UK For Trademark-Linked Ads
nuke-alwin writes "Channel 4 news in the UK is reporting that Google will be sued by Lastminute.com for the way it sells advertising. Adverts from competitors will now be displayed when searching for some trademarks. Google says consumers will benefit. Some trademarks become so familiar that all similar products are known by the trademark name: Coke and Hoover, for example. I think searching for these kinds of words should allow competitors to advertise their similar products."
Trademarks are to identify the source of goods. Trademarks are not to protect your good from competition. Nor are the copyrights to protect your trademark from use by others outside of identifying the source of goods.
paintball
boo fucking hoo.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
Oh, Google's being sued. I thought Google was suing the UK. For $100 billion canadian...I've got to stop reading this at five in the morning. Don't ask me how many times it took me to type that sentence. Please.
I've been reading the Wikipedia on genericized trademarks (off-topic: shouldn't it be "generized"?) and it doesn't give too much information about the process of certifying the genericity of a trademark: it seems to happen per se if the trademark owner doesn't take steps to avoid genericization, and sometimes even if steps are taken. Would anybody please point me to a better reference?
"Known" in informal usage is one thing. Actually marketed that way is quite another. Would you expect to see Pepsi brand "coke" or Dyson brand "hoovers" being advertised?
If you allow your trademark to become a generic term, then eventually you may lose the protection it provides. Trademarks are defend-it-or-lose-it. I say may lose because AFAIK this particular principle, of using a trademarked term as a generic term in a commercial search, is a new legal area. So at least we know that a lot of lawyers will make a lot of money out of it. Which is nice.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
If I put "lastminute.com" into Google, they've got about the top 6 links in the search page. The URL of their competitors is clearly shown elsewhere.
Are lastminute.com in trouble? Have they got SCO-level management fighting against the reality than anyone can set up what they do (and a lot of their site isn't "last minute" anyway).
You know what's funny? The most likely impact of this move is that more people will link to this slashdot article and drive this up the main index, to the detriment of them.
Google is still an optional service. If you don't like how they deal with you, don't use them.
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
That caught me off guard, too. I didn't know that building dams is such a competitive business.
"Coke.. okay, maybe. Hoover? I never hear anyone say, "go get the Hoover."
I've heard the term 'hoovering' used to describe vacuuming. I think over in Englad it was more widely used that way. (That is if TV has actually taught me something.)
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
Yep, it's pretty standard usage in England - I hoover with my Dyson!
I think "hoover" tends to be quite common in some areas of the UK, but primarily amongst the older generation now.
You're quite right about "Xerox" and "Kleenex" though. I'd throw in to the list "Band Aid", "Post It" and "Biro".
It all depends on where you live though - different countries, and even different locations within countries are more or less likely to use these. For example, in Japan there's "almost" a verb for copying ("xeroxing") based on the name Ricoh (roughly "Ricohpying"). Or in some less developed countries, the world "Nescafe" is a synonym for "coffee".
My book about LSD and Self-Discovery
Also on facebook as: DroppingAcidDaleBewan
That's not the point. The point is the phone book calls them plumbers; it doesn't list them under a brand name (like whatever the equivalent is for Tesco's in plumbing.) Tesco would have no case if a Google search for "supermarkets" threw up ads for non-Tesco supermarkets. What they object to is a customer searching for "Tesco" and being advertised something else. Whether their objection is valid is a matter of debate but there's no analogy with the phone book.
In Russian, "kseroks" is vastly more popular as a general term than "kopir." There is a verb "kserit'" which means "to copy on a copier" :-) There is even an adjective "kserokopirovalny" meaning "related to copying on a copier."
Try the English2American dictionary - 'h' section :
http://english2american.com/dictionary/h.html
Max.
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/VAX
No. If Google is found to be violating any laws, then it will have to correct the violation. But if the said laws themselves are evil, then by correcting the violation, Google commits an evil act, even if it does so under compulsion.
Not in all circumstances. Rarely, in fact.
For example, slavery was once legal. Does that mean it's also a moral practice?
Marijuana is illegal. Does that mean possessing it is morally wrong ("evil")?
This is called "appeal to authority" and is a logical fallacy. Laws should not be the moral barometer for a person. Certainly, they should help assist in forming moral standpoints, but since laws originate with people, and people have the capacity to do evil, laws may not be good 100% of the time. It's late; hope that made sense.
If Google responds with "We're sorry your are unhappy with our list of your company, we will of course remove all references/links to your company from our listings. And BTW, for now on the results listing your competitors were not matched by using your trademark, but rather by data about what links people clicked on in the past after searching for a specific string."
Personally, I do think it is wrong to bombard someone searching for a JohnWidget with SallyImitation Ads. Phrased another way, "If you don't want to lose customers, you'll pay us to display your ads instead." There are a lot of examples of this same pattern. Like when the phone company charges you extra to not list and distribute you number to all the telemarketers. Like if you don't pay your "protection" money... Well you get the point.
It's not a copyright issue, but rather one of principal. It has become an all too common, and too frequently accepted practice to push people away from what they wanted based on revenue (under the guise of 'for their benefit').
Businesses aren't to blame. The herds of mindless drones that not only don't think for themselves, but accept this tactic are to blame. That's why businesses do it, because it works. Consider this the next time you try to get a drink at a drive-thru and have to repeat that you only want a drink five times while they try to sell you their entire menu.
Well, it's kind of hard to organize like this with the printed page. Too many combinations of "searches" for specific trade marked names. However, with dynamically generated content backed by a database it's a breeze.
I bet if the yellowpages had an online site, they'd do the exact same thing.....oh wait, they do: http://www.yellowpages.com/nationwide/name_search/wal-mart?search_mode=all&search_terms=wal+mart
Look at the right side of the page, a long list of "Related Businesses".