French Designer Ordered to Give up milka.fr

jmf writes "The BBC is running a story about French designer Milka Budumir, who has been ordered by a judge to give up milka.fr to Kraft Foods. You can read her side of the story (in French) at her site which also points to Kraft's side of the story. Kraft make very good chocolate, but they seem to be colour-blind: claiming that this website's colour is similar to this one's."

WHOA!

[sandstorming]

Thank god I didn't register that domain... I was going to... but I decided with http://www.mycrowsoft.com Crisis averted!

Evil Milka!

[Harald74]

On top of everything: Their site is a Web-trap! No "back" button for me! Aaargh!

Designer?

[nmg196]

He's a *designer* and his website looks like *that*?!

Similar color schemes, sure.

[jonadab]

Those colour schemes are similar, in the sense that both of them make heavy
use of garish, clashing, high-saturation colours that DON'T GO TOGETHER.

from the you-must-give-up-your-milka dept.

[fr0dicus]

Worst department name ever?

It's an outrage

[slushbat]

Personally I don't think this judgement goes nearly far enough. How can she get away with such blatant infringement of their trademark. Fancy trying to pass herself off as a chocolate bar. I think she should be forced to change her name immediately.

Re:a designer ???

[Tim Browse]

How about if she was a young granny?

Re:Kraft owns Milka?

[-brazil-]

But they have purple cows!!!

Re:WHOA!

[Anonymous Coward]

"but I decided with http://www.mycrowsoft.com"

Sorry to hear that. You know, I think there are drugs you can take to make your 'crow' hard again.

Re:Kraft makes good chocolate? Doubtful.

[greyhoundpoe]

All right, that bunny is really starting to fucking freak me out. You want to warn us before you post a link like that?

Reminds me of many years ago.

[sgant]

Some years ago, before even the big dot-com boom and before the net was even popular, I had somehow registered www.gant.com. I mean, this was in the registration infancy when there were just a handfull of web sites. I honestly don't even remember registering it and at the time I though the Web was going to be a fad...ok, I never claimed to be a visionary. Besides, IRC-Gopher-Usenet-FTP WAS the Internet to me...again, at the time.

Anyway, to make a long story longer...the lawyers from Gant Shirts got ahold of me some years later demanding I release all claims on gant.com to them...but of course, I didn't mention that I didn't even remember registering it...but why muck up the water? So I wrote back and said, hey, it's my fricken name! How could I part with my name! Then I started channeling Arthur Millers "The Crucible" with "Because it is my name! Because I cannot have another in my life! Because I lie and sign myself to lies! Because I am not worth the dust on the feet of them that hang! How may I live without my name? I have given you my soul; LEAVE ME MY NAME!"

They cut a check for an even grand and I found I could part with my name pretty easily after all.

Re:OMFG

[mr_z_beeblebrox]

Man, I thought France was about freedom and justice.

You're thinking of Iraq!

Re:Kraft makes good chocolate? Doubtful.

[swv3752]

It is good chocolate by German standards. :-P

Re:Did anyone read anything at all?

[M. Baranczak]

If her customers are local namely those who are in walking distance of her store.. then why does she need a website at all.

Possibly true. But by the same token, why does Milka (the chocolate company) need a website at all? They sell their products in retail stores, not over the net. Their site serves absolutely no useful purpose.* Sometime in the 90s, the finest minds of the business world decided that a product needs to have a "web presence" in order to be taken seriously. It doesn't matter if anyone actually visits the site, or if the site generates any income - it's just a status symbol.

* I could be wrong about that. I didn't look around the site because 1) I don't speak German, and 2) that fucking rabbit was bugging the hell out of me.

Re:OMFG

[The-Perl-CD-Bookshel]

Anyone who has seen The Holy Grail knows that taunting is quite an effective strategy in France.

I've got your suggestion right here

[sunhou]

Kraft had suggested that Mrs Budimir launch a new website under the domain name www.milkacouture.fr...

Mrs. Budimir should suggest that Kraft re-launch their own website, under the name www.butthead-astronomers-chocolate.fr.

Re:Translation:

[Anonymous Coward]

What the hell is 41th?

Try 41nd instead.

Re:Reminds me of many years ago.

[Anonymous Coward]

I had a similar problem after I registered my surname as a domain name. Except in my case, I happen to have the unfortunate last name "HotTeenBitches."

At least that's what I told the judge.

Re:Kraft makes good chocolate? Doubtful.

[Jim_Callahan]

Ye gods! It's the chocolate version of a Mac user!