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."

a designer ???

[Anonymous Coward]

one old granny doing clothes touch'ups isn't what I would call a designer

Kraft makes good chocolate? Doubtful.

[seifried]

I call BS. Find me one Kraft "chocolate" product where Chocolate or Cocoa butter is listed first ont he ingredients (i.e. the majority ingredient), or even then second or third one.... To be perfectly honest I have never seen a Kraft "chocolate" product, but I have seen their "cheese" prducts (and as a kid I ate them, but now they make me gag).

OMFG

[Anonymous Coward]

OK, so first this 'kraft' company doesnt register domains for all their brands on the country tld's. Then, *YEARS* later they go "oops, it's alreay taken! What should we do? Oh, thats right! Sue the bastard. Who is the bastard anyway? Ah!".

So they got away with their neglection by fixing it with a lawsuit. Man, I thought France was about freedom and justice.

Bad, but Not Too Bad

[Anonymous Coward]

How much business could the website be generating for her in the first place?
She should appeal, then settle. Go to the new suggested domain (milkacouture.fr) and have Kraft link her from Milka.fr with a brief note about the settlement.
Irregardless, I hope she has the sense to register the alternative (milkacouture) just in case. It's currently unreserved and prime for a squatter.

Kraft owns Milka?

[MunchMunch]

I spent a year in Austria around 1996 and, coming from America where you have Hershey's or the highway, Milka was like rediscovering chocolate. Compared to it, America chocolate tasted sort of chalky and brittle at best, 1984-style-chocolate-ration at worst.

So when did Kraft buy it? Does this mean it's gonna get worse?

Re:Not a designer

[KiloByte]

If you don't own "trademark" to your own name, something is really fucked up...

Besides, Milka-the-company owns their trademark only for chocolate and dairy products, it's available for all other uses. If a "script kiddie for hire" company in town A is named "Pwnage", this doesn't restrict a "bouncers for hire" company in town B from using the same name. In fact, giving one of them advantage over the other -- that is, any advantage other than preventing people from knowingly infringing an established name -- is just plain wrong. And show me how exactly the old lady's parents were knowingly abusing the company's name...

why didn't they register it before?

[Dr.Opveter]

Question is, why didn't Kraft register milka.fr if it was so important to them? Big companies should just register all big top level domains so you don't get this nonsense later.
And if they don't they shouldn't be surprised someone else (legitemately) registered it, i think she's entitled to keep it because it's her name and Kraft was too cheap to register it in the first place.

Re:Kraft makes good chocolate? Doubtful.

[seifried]

Replying to my own post... Yes I have had Milka, in fact I can buy it locally at a german supermarket (K&K foodliner). And no I don't much care for it. As far as common north american chocolate brands go (Hershey's, Cadbury, etc) I won't touch them with a 10 foot pole. If I'm desperate and slumming it I will have Sport Ritter or Lindt, but generally speaking I stick to the expensive stuff (since one small piece tastes infinitely better and is more satisfying then an entire slab of cheap chocolate). Quality, not Quantity (something in north american food culture we seem to be missing =(.

Re:Designer?

[slavemowgli]

She, not he. And she's a fashion designer, not a web designer, which is a big difference - next time you design a website, try to come up with the haute couture to go with it and you'll know what I mean. :)

Re:oh the humanity

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey, just because it happened to your Mom doesn't mean it'll happen to her.

Besides, you Mom taught you a useful trade - you've got to be thankful for that, huh?

(Many apologies - but your comment came closer to troll than joke, and I just wanted to point out that it is not nice to be cruel to people... as you can see from being on the receiving end. It's always surprising to see a low UID /.er misjudge their comments though ;)

Re:Kraft owns Milka?

[ghoti]

Milka is the Microsoft of the European chocolate market. They are trying to push everybody else out, shamelessly copy other products, and all their products taste exactly the same. What's the point of buying chocolate easter bunnies when they taste exactly like the bar of chocolate you buy all year? Damn those big fucking companies, I want my variety back!

Re:Not a designer

[VdG]

I've got a slight interest in this, since Kraft are one of my customers and I used to work for them. However...

Most major companies are extremely interested in brand names. They see the brand name itself as more important than any individual product that's associated with it. They're always looking for new products to associate with succesful brands. It also means they get very concerned at any threat to the brand image.

In this particular case, Kraft are not in the clothing business, nor are they ever likely to be. But they *do* have interests in promotional items which might well include clothes.

The Milka brand has for a very long time been associated with a particular colour: a shade of lilac/purple. Compared side-by-side there's not much similarity between that and the milka.fr site. But milka.fr does use a sort of purple/mauve colour: someone going to that site might conceivably mistake it for the trade-marked colour - if they didn't have an example to hand - and think that the site was associated with the chocolate in some way.

I suspect that Kraft's objection is not so much that Ms Milka might make soome money out of it, but that their customers might wonder "why is Milka associated with this tatty little fashion site?", thus damaging the name.

Not a big risk, but if they let one site get away with it - however innocently - they leave themselves wide-open to future abuse.

Coming down on the side of big business isn't going to be popular around here, but I think that Kraft are quite justified in this case, provided that they don't get too heavy-handed.

Re:Kraft makes good chocolate? Doubtful.

[CastrTroy]

Cote D'or is made by Kraft. In the future, everything will be owned by one superhuge conglomerate.

Re:Boycott!

[delta_avi_delta]

Unfortunately, like people who boycott Nestle for noble reasons, I think Kraft are too big, to *everywhere* to notice. You probably buy a lot more of their products than you realise.

Re:Not a designer

[bicho]

So its ok to abuse others if it is because this way they might prevent others from abusing them later?

Re:Kraft owns Milka?

[dunkelfalke]

as someone living in germany i say milka sucks.

even the cheapest german chocolate is better than milka.

if you want to try a really good chocolate, try lindt

Re:a designer ???

[Anonymous Coward]

and what's your point? really? and why is the above garbage moderated up? so an old granny should't have a right anymore? we as individuals, need more rights than corporations. she doesn't need to incorporate to have a right.

Re:Not a designer

[joebok]

This person WAS using her domain responsibly - she was not selling adulterated chocolate. What I would like to return to are the days before corporate personhood - I would like the rights of individuals to be more important than the rights of businesses.

And I don't really care if companies register every conceivable domain - actually, that seems like it would be a prudent practice to me.

Tell them

[funben]

Tell Kraftfood that they should behae another way : Here [kraftfoods.com] or [e-mail]

Re:OMFG

[CrackedButter]

Mod parent funny. Mod me insightful.

Re:Not a designer

[joebok]

Why should the courts have to save corporations money? If you want your brand name in a convenient url form to be available in a country where you market your goods/services, then it is part of the cost of doing business for you to take the time and invest the capital to make a go of it.

Part of the strategy of moving into a new market would be to come up with a plan - investigate available urls, perhaps try to make deals to get ones that you feel would be more advantageous. If there is some cyber-squatting or trademark infringement going on, then maybe the courts would be a good option. This particular case, however, is not cyber-squatting. It is not trademark infringement. It's poor planning by Kraft if you ask me. Milka the person has done nothing wrong - why should she have to change her url to milkacourtwhatever (sorry, don't recall what Kraft suggested)? Why can't kraft register milkachocolate or whatever?

Re:Kraft owns Milka?

[LuSiDe]

that the name chocolate would be allowed for products containing other vegetal oils than cocoa butter (i.e. soy bean, etc).

Yes, and? I say 'duh, look at the ingredients'. If i buy soy-chocolate without wanting milk in it (which i do as vegan) and it tastes like chocolate -- then its choclate, isn't it? I don't see the problem. Just look at the ingredients, thats something you should do anyway. If a story declines you that or declines to answer the percentages then they're not worth your money.

Re:Sort of...

[Mr. Underbridge]

The poster did not say it was not intellectual usage, he said it was not a word. Which would imply something on the order of "smeglefyer."

The distinction being what - that "irregardless" becomes a word simply because a number of people use it incorrectly? Irregardless of how many people use it that way, it's still incorrect. By your standard, any set of connected letters that someone incorrcetly uses in speech becomes a word. It's only in the dictionary because many people use it incorrectly.

You can split hairs all you want, you'll still sound ridiculous if you use it in speech.

Re:a designer ???

[MerlinTheWizard]

You don't have to be a company to get a .fr domain name. It's just significantly more expensive to get a .fr domain than a .net or .com one... Besides, this woman probably is a "small company" since she works independent and as such is entitled to have claims on her name, be it her first name!

That said, it's likely that this domain name was chosen on purpose (I think her son took care of the web site) to get more audience. But then again, she's just doing very very small business. Sueing her was just ridiculous in my opinion. If the damn chocolate company wanted this domain name to begin with, they should have thought of registering it long ago instead of waiting for someone to register it and sue them. Lame, if you ask me.

BUT she HAD IT FIRST!!

[Newer Guy]

Doresn't thatcount for ANYTHING these days? Seems to me that we're giving COROPRATIONS more freedoms and rights then PEOPLE!!

Re:Kraft makes good chocolate? Doubtful.

[andrew_0812]

Quality, not Quantity (something in north american food culture we seem to be missing =(.

We aren't missing it, it is just against the American way of life. Take everything good and wholesome and come up with a cheap, mechanized, pasterized, homoginized, and preservativized way to mass produce something that looks exactly like the original product, and is almost, but not quite, entirely unlike it in every other way.

I love this country. (Just don't drink the water)

Re:Not a designer

[Unordained]

Corporation A decides not to buy every possible domain name for their products, because it costs too much. Business B buys a domain name that seems available and unencumbered, for their business. Business B has spent money Corporation A couldn't be bothered to spend. Business B then goes on to use the domain name and associate it with their services; they build up a customer base; they rely on having this domain name as part of their advertising, branding, etc. Corporation A then says "oh, look, something related to our name is owned by someone else" and gets it snatched away by the court. Business B is now left without their domain name they worked hard on. Corporation A which probably already had plenty of domain names now has one more, insignificant, domain name, and the added benefit that Business B's customers visit the URL not knowing it's changed ownership. Business B now has to go and start over again, find a new name, build up its customer base again, redo its advertising, etc. and hope, pray to some deity, that the same thing doesn't happen to them again. What this amounts to, via chilling effects, is that companies can "reserve" domain names for free -- everyone will/should be too afraid of litigation to go anywhere near any names that might someday be snatched by someone on shaky grounds. Corporation A can now avoid spending any money on domain names until someone else does, knowing those "undiscovered" domain names out there are theirs regardless of whether or not they pay the appropriate fees ahead of time.

So no, it's not okay in principle.

Re:Sort of...

[KingJoshi]

Yes, if enough people use it (even if incorrect), it becomes a word. You don't get to choose if something is NOT a word. The general public does (in a sense). That's how English works. It's not like French where there is a standard. Language is dynamic, get used to it.

People come from different backgrounds and are raised differently. For some, it's natural to say "irregardless". Some say "offen" while others say "offten", big whoop. Get over it.