Google Abandons the Gmail Name In Germany

praps writes "A three-year trademark conflict has ended with Google withdrawing its use of the Gmail brand in Germany. On Friday, a plain-text message appeared, beginning 'We can't provide service under the Gmail name in Germany ... Bummer.' Despite the climbdown, Google Germany's spokesman said on Monday that the action was being taken 'even though we believe we're not legally obliged to do so.'" We discussed the tussle in Germany when Google first lost in court a year ago.

Comments

Surprising?

[Mensa Babe]

Well, it's hardly surprising. According to government records, the only names not yet trademarked are "Popplers" and "Zittzers". I remember the internal confusion at Google back in the day when there were plans to set up a worldwide network of Google hot spots, or Gspots, only to find out that it is nearly impossible to find a name that is both pleasant to the ear, even remotely meaningful and not already taken. Enyone remembers the scandal three years ago? This is another example. And what about our beloved Firefox browser? It had to change its name not once, not twice, but trice to finally get rid of the trademark problems and still any literate person will point out to the Craig Thomas' novel, not to mention the Firefox bicycle company, or the Malaguti Firefox scooter, all of which being much older than any web browser on Earth. But does it mean that people can't use Google to check for any prior art of the name they have chosen for their projects? No. It just means that all of that trademark hysteria of the last one and a half decades, this "get outta my intellectual property!" attitude, it all hurts progress. Because, at the end of the day, isn't progress what it is all about? Shouldn't we just shut up, roll up our sleeves and start making our global village a better place instead of worrying about not hurting someones feelings or not breaking some law? I am really sick of every good initiative being sabotaged by someone who "owns" some "intellectual property". Google is probably one of ten, maybe twenty companies that are more concerned about morals and ethics than profits, yet some Germans have a problem with one of its most popular names and when do they sue? When the name is already known worldwide! This is just too much. Please let me quote a great thinker, George Bernard Shaw: "If you have an apple and I have an apple and we exchange these apples then you and I will still each have one apple. But if you have an idea and I have an idea and we exchange these ideas, then each of us will have two ideas."

Re:Surprising?

[exley]

The name "gmail" was already taken for an e-mail provider. Except for hard-core Google fanboys (and girls), this really seems like a pretty open-and-shut case.

For a case like Firefox, where there are other companies using "Firefox" in their name... I don't think there's any chance of bicycles and scooters being confused with a web browser. But an e-mail service and... An e-mail service, well, there might be room for some confusion there.

Google has a shitload of money. Does anyone really think they'd back down on this if they didn't have to?

Big gigantic company doesn't get its way every single time. Boo hoo. I think Google will survive.

Re:Surprising?

[Anonymous Coward]

You totally miss the point.

- Google is known worldwide, not "gmail"
not using your Googol-$ brand is a bummer

- they sued right away when gmail started

- every major multinational company knows how to
research international brand names, but Google can't? Google is not mozilla.org
At least they should learn how to find and use a good search engine in the internets.

- Google is not the savior of this planet, but another BIG company in the hands of greedy shareholders, like any other.
If you don't believe that. let's wait what will remain of Yahoo once Carl Icahn is done with it.

Re:Surprising?

[Anonymous Coward]

When the name is already known worldwide!

You do realize that Daniel Giersch has had the trademark since 2000, right?

If so, are you arguing that larger entities should be entitled to remove properties from smaller entities merely due to their notoriety?

Re:Surprising?

[dreamchaser]

You had me up until this bit:

Google is probably one of ten, maybe twenty companies that are more concerned about morals and ethics than profits

Google is interested in profits, period. That doesn't make them bad. It just makes them like any other publically held company. The 'Don't be Evil' motto went out the window when they went public, for better or for worse.

Re:Surprising?

[Anonymous Coward]

For a case like Firefox, where there are other companies using "Firefox" in their name... I don't think there's any chance of bicycles and scooters being confused with a web browser. Well, I didn't think there was a chance of web browser being confused with BIOS firmware, nor did I think it was possible to confuse a browser with a database, but still the browser now known as Firefox was forced to change its name because of that potential confusion with Phoenix BIOS and FirebirdSQL, didn't it?

Re:Surprising?

[mqduck]

Google has a shitload of money. Does anyone really think they'd back down on this if they didn't have to? Google does indeed have a shitload of money. I'm somewhat surprised they haven't bought the rights to the name/the company. Were they asking for "too much" money? For that matter, how big are the g-mail people?

Re:Surprising?

[POTSandPANS]

Yes, Google does have a lot of money, probably enough to win. Google is not microsoft, they walked away instead of killing another company over a name. If you remember, there was a program called windows defender, but microsoft wanted to call their anti-spyware program windows defender. Microsoft threatened to sue, the guy gave up the name just because he couldn't afford to fight microsoft for it.

Before you say Google lost, maybe you should consider that they decided to walk away..

Re:Surprising?

[jesterzog]

It just means that all of that trademark hysteria of the last one and a half decades, this "get outta my intellectual property!" attitude, it all hurts progress. Because, at the end of the day, isn't progress what it is all about? Shouldn't we just shut up, roll up our sleeves and start making our global village a better place instead of worrying about not hurting someones feelings or not breaking some law? I am really sick of every good initiative being sabotaged by someone who "owns" some "intellectual property".

I can't comment on this particular case with much knowledge, but if I spent a lot of time, money and effort to build up a local product around a particular name, I'd be really annoyed if someone else came in from overseas and usurped all that effort making it worthless. This is particularly the case if their only claim to having the name was that they happened to be a company 1000+ times larger than my own (eg. Google, Microsoft) with expensive lawyers, and they thought it'd be a nice name for their own service. Businesses and organisations shouldn't get special treatment over others just because they happen to be well known and (in some cases) liked by a lot of people.

Clearly there should be some kind of common sense approach to trademarks, without clearly defining what that actually means, but I don't think that simply stomping on anyone who happens to already be using a name that a corporation like Google might want is the way to go. If these guys were using 'gmail' in Germany before Google created its own service, and if they were using it for something that might be confused with Google's service (which they clearly were), and if they notified Google within a reasonable amount of time, then I think they're completely within their rights to take this action. Good for them.

It's part of doing global business that some names might already be being used in some countries. The people at Google should know this as much as every other corporation and plan for it accordingly. If Google picked a global name that might eventually send more business to a possible competitor, then it's Google's own fault.

Re:Surprising?

[moronoxyd]

Du you pronounce "gmail" and "g-mail" differently?
I don't.

Re:Surprising?

[jorghis]

Um, no, they tried to fight the little guy who held the rights to it for years and eventually the court ended up ruling against them. "Not being evil" would have been if they had walked away as soon as they realized that another guy legitimately owned the name gmail. Google's failure to crush the little guy in this instance was not for lack of trying.

In the case of windows defender at least MS had an argument that the third party had no right to use the name "windows" as part of their trademark. Google didnt even have that.

Basically the MS case in this instance is less evil than the Google case. It is amusing to see all the fanboys try to find some reason why google was being morally superior in this instance though.

Re:Surprising?

[bytesex]

This is the problem with people running international companies that rely on a single letter to brand all their products - you can only have 26 of them. Let's see where we are with that; 'g' is for Google, 'j' is for Sun, 'i' is for Steve.. Hey ! We can make a nursery rhyme out of this !

FFS

[zoomshorts]

Call it GoogleMail , not rocket science.

Buy the company takeover the trademark

[W00dyW00d]

They should of just bought the company and took the trademark. They might have some cash to spare?

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Hmph

[Kalriath]

Except that he had a service called "Gmail" before Google had a service called "Gmail".

As such, your entire post is completely irrelevant.