New Legal Threat To GMail

wellington writes "Google is facing a renewed threat of legal action from a company that claims to own the intellectual property rights to its GMail e-mail service. Independent International Investment Research, a British company that specialises in research and has several leading City investment banks as clients, argues that it launched "G-Mail web based email" in May 2002."

Intellectual property rights to GMail?

[Itchy Rich]

Surely this is just trademark infringment at most. The summary seems to infer that general IP rights to the service are involved, rather than just the name.

Sounds legitimate

[brucmack]

Sounds like they have a legitimate claim here... They did launch a web-based email service called GMail well before Google. The fact that they've been negotiating with Google for the past 15 months would indicate that they also brought their claim to Google early on. I wonder why Google hasn't just paid them to license the name? Wouldn't they rather use some of their excess money reserves than risk a tarnished name?

Re:Fair's fair...

[Professeur Shadoko]

zero ?

and what about the ads ?

free != zero-profit.

Vague Summary

[aussie_a]

Wow, yet another vague summary, that can definitely be misleading. Having first read the summary, I thought it was about a company claiming to have created the code and/or services of Gmail only to have google steal it. But no, the company is merely sueing for trademark infringement. Way to go slashdot! The word "TRADEMARK" could have been mentioned somewhere in the article, would have cleared it up a tiny bit. But I guess Slashdot gets more pageviews (and ad views) by confusing its readers.

Two letters

[slapout]

Why doesn't google just cough up another letter and call it "GoMail"? Or if that's taken "GoogMail", etc.

From TFA...

[Foobar of Borg]

He [Mr. Smith] said he was "reluctantly" considering taking legal action against Google, which could involve his family trust selling shares in the group to fund the claim.

"I feel it is up to me as the founder and the major shareholder. We're not going to sit on the sidelines while a company uses our intellectual property rights," he said. "We're confident that we have the funding available to us and we're girding our loins," he said.

As much as they may have a case, I always find the "we don't want to, but they are forcing us" argument funny. Not because of the company itself, but because I can imagine some IP lawyers saying, "Yesss! They are being forccced to! Hisss!" as their forked tongues flick from their mouths and they rub thier greedy paws together with reptilian glint in their eyes.

Re:A case of too little too late?

[HardCase]

The article isn't that long. Read it.

Re:Two letters

[DarkFencer]

What would that do to all the people with @gmail.com addresses? Yeah, people can change it but for that many users it would be a royal PITA.

gmail.com

[bookemdano63]

But they never bother spending the $10 to register gmail.com?

See how STUPID this is?

[symbolic]

Google, the internet search engine, is facing a renewed threat of legal action from a company that claims to own the intellectual property rights to its GMail e-mail service.

Is it just me, or is there something particularly novel and innovative about a browser-based e-mail service? Or, is there something particularly stupid about a company laying claims to this idea as its "intellectual property?" None of the concepts are particularly new.

Sounds like bull

[Tassach]

If these folks had 'gmail' as a legitimate trademark for an actual product or service (not vaporware), why then did they not register the domain names for their alleged trademark? Registering "gmail" in every top-level domain for 10 years would have cost them less than $1000. If they actually had a legitimate business plan to launch a "gmail" service, securing the domains would have been the FIRST thing they would have done. Failing to register the domains, while trademarking a non-existant "service" smells of submarine tactics and demonstrates bad faith. Their failure to secure thier trademark by registering the domains also demonstrates criminal negligence on their part and is grounds for a shareholder lawsuit. Dollars to doughnuts says their business plan was "wait until someone with money grabs the gmail domains and does something with them, then sue them for everything we can get"

Re:Two letters

[slapout]

Good point. I wonder why the other company didn't register the gmail.com domain.

Re:Vague Summary

[Omnifarious]

No, it's all intellectual property. We have to use the word property, it's very important. Otherwise, how can we legitimately claim 'piracy' and 'stealing' if it's not property?

Personally, I think the editors should put their money where their mouth is and summararily reject any story that uses the words 'intellectual property' in the article blurb.

Re:From TFA...

[PhysicsPhil]

As much as they may have a case, I always find the "we don't want to, but they are forcing us" argument funny. Not because of the company itself, but because I can imagine some IP lawyers saying, "Yesss! They are being forccced to! Hisss!" as their forked tongues flick from their mouths and they rub thier greedy paws together with reptilian glint in their eyes.

One of the problems with owning a trademark is that you must defend it or lose it. Unlike copyright, trademarks can be invalidated in court if they become diluted through other people using it. If these guys want to continue to have rights to the GMail trademark, they are forced to litigate.

GMail = Google Mail

[salimma]

Note that Google's Mail service is now accessible at mail.google.com? Pretty much all the g-prefixes have been removed.

So they'll probably settle if necessary and just go on with Google Mail. Big deal.

Re:Sounds legitimate

[Saeed al-Sahaf]

It's a frikken G and a dash. The fact that Google would have to pay a company to use a G is just ridiculousness.

Yes, but had it been the other way around, you know very well that Google would not have been "good" and just looked the other way.

Use it or lose it.

[tomstdenis]

I could write a program to combine suffix/prefix combos to common words like "mail", "net", "service", "video", "sound", "conference"

Then sue everyone 3 years afterwards?

The fact they never even bought a domain name for the service [or advertised it broadly] suggests they're not seriously impacted by Googles actions because it's their own ineptitude that crippled any chance of making it big.

Tom

I doubt that was their intention

[Marc2k]

The article makes it seem like this company's "GMailTM web-based email" service doesn't even exist. Phrases like: "The idea was that", "it launched "G-MailTM web based email" in May 2002", etc. all talk of this 'service' in the past tense, there's no speak of whether or not this product still actually is still in existence. Granted, they still own the rights to the trademark, and one of the stipulations of owning a trademark is that you police yours. Still, why would a company with a deceased (presumably, because let's face it..this company would be suing Google whether or not they still actually maintained the service) product/service sue a company, instead of merely not policing their TM, and releasing it "back into the wild"?

Oh, that's right. Money. I'm guessing it went like this:

• Trademark name.
• Run mediocre project into the ground.
• Begin talks with Google to try to get them to give you money, since you still own the trademark to a product that does not still exist.
• Fail.
• Send out press release to major news media, stating that you're going to sue Google, because there's no such thing as bad press.
• 
  
  Also, I'm kind of miffed that this keeps getting called an "intellectual property struggle". G'fuh? I remember back in the old days, we used to call them "trademark disputes". I wasn't aware that changing the first letter of a well-known contraction for "electronic mail" was a rigorous intellectual task. If that's your claim to fame, you're an idiot.
  
  

Re:Fight Google?

[MOBE2001]

I don't think they can fight Google...

Yes they can. They just need the right law firm. Google has a lot of money and everybody wants a piece of it. The IP hoarders deserve to be constantly at each other's throats, IMO. If you live by the sword, you will perish by the sword. Well, you will at least get hurt. Didn't Oracle have to pay 100 million US dollars or so to settle an IP-related suit just recently? Companies are like kids fighting over who the toys belong to. When will they wake up and grow up? It is obvious that the IP laws are stupid. So isn't something done about it? Answer: Greed.

I say let them rip out one another's throats. Problem is, the lawyers benefit immensely from this crap. And as long as lawyers are making both the laws and a shitload of money, we (the public) will continue to pay the price. In the meantime, the rich gets richer and the poor gets shafted. Sorry for being so cynical.

Re:Sounds legitimate

[iamdrscience]

So, if I were to come out with a game system called the "X-box" this would be entirely okay by your interpretation of trademark law? Because Microsoft's system is called the "Xbox", which is obviously entirely different, right?

Get real, trademark law protects your trademark from all other marks which are mistakenly similar, not just identical.

Because they can't be found

[msobkow]

IIIR has no website which can be located by Google, Yahoo, or any other search engine that I've used.

All that comes up are some investor reports like OneSource [onesourceexpress.com], which reports them as having a whole seven employees.

Trademarks are not automatically international, and the mere presence of the "G" before "Mail" is not a trademark. Trademarks are either specific spellings (with/without hyphens), logos, icons, color combinations, etc.

The lawsuit sounds like basic "trolling for dollars", legal style.

E-Mail vs. Email

[SeanDuggan]

You don't think that GMail and G-Mail are confusingly similar?
Especially given that there's still no consensus [alt-usage-english.org] as to whether to refer to electronic mail as "email" or "e-mail"...

Re:mods: funny?!

[Conanymous Award]

Yes, but it's tragicomical to the point where even /. moderators don't know whether laugh or cry... A perfect example of "intellectual property" gone wild.

Re:Repeat after me: There's no such thing as "IP"

[Canthros]

And what you've just said is:
Trademarks, copyrights, and patents are the sorts of things designated by the general classification of intellectual property--but intellectual property doesn't exist!

When people talk about intellectual property, they are talking about trademarks, copyrights, patents, or the ideas or information covered by same (books, inventions, company and product names and logos). Inasmuch as a piece of intellectual property does not exist, neither does any idea or piece of information. Nonetheless, ideas and information remain useful and valuable, even in themselves. So, even though intellectual property is not real (i.e. physical) property, its value remains real. Thus, it remains useful to be able to protect and assign ownership to the value so derived.

As for the term being usable in an intelligent fashion, well, RMS is hardly final arbiter of intelligence, language, or reality. It seems likely that he rejects the idea of ownership of such things. He's certainly got the right, but it doesn't make him correct.

Re:Fight Google?

[mollymoo]

The IP hoarders deserve to be constantly at each other's throats, IMO.

The IP in question is a trademark (awful journalism banging on about 'owning the intellectual property rights to the GMail service'). I take it you think Linus is an IP hoarder too, because Linux is trademarked.

This seems like a perfectly straightforward trademark dispute to me. No glaring flaws in this area of intellectual property law that I can see. This kind of dispute does not deserve to be lumped in with the ridiculous patents and copyright excesses we've seen.

Ill afford?

[Petter3]

... and said it had no alternative but to pursue an expensive legal action that it admitted it could ill afford.

Translation:
Does anyone with a beef against Google want to donate to our worthy cause? Anyone?

Re:Intellectual property rights to GMail?

[Hugonz]

In a broad sense, it *is* right. The only problem is that it it misleading. When I first went through the summary, I though GMail was using some of their actual code... you see... intellectual property.

You maybe would want to say Intellectual Property if you are talking about trademarks, patents and/or copyright in, say, an article or a paper. But claiming you have intellectual property when you claim rights to a trademark is misleading. It's like claiming someone did "considerable economic damage" to you when they owe you 5 bucks.

Not at all.

[phriedom]

Google could just trade under the "Google Mail" name, and advertise the mail.google.com addresses, but since they own gmail.com and are using it the gmail.com addresses could still continue to work, and jut forward to a comparable mail.google.com addresses. There would not have to be any distruption of service to the user, but the name would change.

Unless g-mail can win the gmail.com name, that is another story. Right now they are just threatening to sue for trademark infringement.