French Designer Ordered to Give up milka.fr 462
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."
Re:Kraft makes good chocolate? Doubtful. (Score:5, Informative)
I believe they purchased the brand after it was well-establishee but that doesn't matter at this point, as Kraft's name is on the letterhead.
Not a designer (Score:5, Informative)
Thing is, in France, trademark law will prevail when it comes to
Country TLDs ownership rules differ from country to country, unlike the usual
Re:Kraft makes good chocolate? Doubtful. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Designer? (Score:3, Informative)
This is her one big chance at fame, let her bask in the spotlight.
Her site has been dormant for a couple of years now, its just recently with the media "interest" that shes spruced it up.
Mind you, it looks downright awful, but who am I to judge.
Re:OMFG (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Kraft makes good chocolate? Definitely! (Score:4, Informative)
Re:ah .. the food companies.. (Score:1, Informative)
It is true that german courts always back the most ludicrous demands when it comes to brand names vs. people's names.
Re:Bad, but Not Too Bad (Score:2, Informative)
It's not a word...good grief
Cadbury isn't American its English (Score:4, Informative)
Translation: (Score:5, Informative)
At the moment their "friendly" solution is to pay for the costs of taking the domain milka.fr from the lady and offering her milkacouture.fr, which is useless to her, because her clients don't know it. She also does not understand why they complain, because she did not do them any damage. Milka claims there is a link between the ladies site and www.food.fr, whish sells pizzas in Valence.
She also says that her site will not lead away internetters who look for the chocolate company, because she only appears as 41th on search engines.
She concludes to say that KRAFT never wanted the best for both parties, and only wanted her to give up the domain name, and only after a struggle of 2 years they are prepared to reimburse her the costs she has made.
Similar case in italy last year (Score:3, Informative)
Search on google "timbrificio armani" if you are interested and you can read italian.
Re:HTML header (Score:2, Informative)
Still, not as bad as FrontPage
Re:Judicial not product confusion (Score:5, Informative)
In order to fill a gap in Europe?
Note that they don't have most of the nordic countries nor the new members of the EU. Hint: many of these domains are open for registration!
Most of these sites redirect to the corresponding Kraft Foods site for that country, or to the globak www.kraft.com [kraft.com].
Re:Kraft makes good chocolate? Doubtful. (Score:5, Informative)
Côte d'Or is owned by Kraft as well. You can see it by looking around on http://www.cotedor.be/ [cotedor.be] or directly on http://www.kraftfoods.be/ [kraftfoods.be]. Fortunately, they haven't changed the products in any significant way so they still taste good.
I would also also recommend trying Galler [galler.com] chocolate (not owned by Kraft Foods - yet).
Re:Not a designer (Score:3, Informative)
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The rules have been relaxed recently.
Meanwhile, it seems to me that two years ago, one still had to present legal papers to register a .fr (Kbis extract for the societies) and that the domain name should be the essential part of the "Raison sociale" (the real official name of the society) or the "nom d'enseigne" (mentionned on the KBis, the common name under which a society is known).
The naming rules are explained there [afnic.fr] (in French).
Re:Judicial not product confusion (Score:5, Informative)
I just realized that I missed an important one:
Until a few years ago, companies that had trademarks in France were supposed to register their domains under .tm.fr. Apparently, Kraft did register www.milka.tm.fr.
But since the rules have changed (around 2002, I think) the company has been trying to get the domain that had been registered by that lady in the meantime.
Re:Kraft owns Milka? (Score:5, Informative)
In reaction, Belgium has created a new label "Ambao" which identifies chocolates containing only cocoa butter. I suppose (and hope) that similar initiatives have been taken in other countries where chocolate is taken seriously
See this article [nytimes.com] for details...
Re:Kraft makes good chocolate? Doubtful. (Score:3, Informative)
Honestly, I disagree with he "finest" part. Rather, Leysieffer [leysieffer.de] or Lindt [lindt.com] come to mind if quality is what I am prompted with (also, compare the style of these sites with "milka" [milka.de] and draw your own conclusions about the targets).
Hard to believe that the most sold product in the segment/category is upmarket anyway.
CC.
Sort of... (Score:3, Informative)
You skipped the part about how it's a "word" created in America in the 20th century, from a blend of "irrespective" and "regardless." The "ir-" prefix and "-less" suffix are redundant. You also fail to mention that Webster's recommends it not be used. Dictionary.com is less kind, calling it a "blunder."
This is an example of a made up word that does not have a correct usage, but American dictionaries put it in because so many people make the mistake. Because it isn't correct usage, many people will make possibly unfounded assumptions about your intellect.
Re:Not a designer (Score:2, Informative)
what TLD do non-business entities in France use then, the universal TLD's?
The criteria were relaxed last May; you no longer need to supply proof of a registered trademark [afnic.fr] when obtaining a
To answer your question: yes, until the law change people either obtained a universal TLD or made do with an ISP subdomain [google.com].
Slight tangent: people here in France seem to have been (kept?) remarkably poorly informed about the procedure for obtaining a domain name, whether it be a
Re:Kraft (Philip Morris) owns Milka? (Score:1, Informative)
In 2001 they split the company, and now Altria Group [altria.com] owns both.
Re:Kraft owns Milka? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Kraft makes good chocolate? Doubtful. (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Cadbury isn't American its English (Score:3, Informative)
Re:a designer ??? (Score:1, Informative)