Google "Loses" Gmail in Europe 154
Hippie Hippie Shake writes to mention that Google has just lost the right to use the name 'Gmail' in Europe, according to the EU. "Daniel Giersch, a German-born 32-year old entrepreneur, has just announced that his company received a positive ruling last week from the Harmonization Office supporting his claim that "Gmail" and his own "G-mail" are confusingly similar. G-mail is a German service that provides a "gmail.de" email address, but also allows for a sort of "hybrid mail" system in which documents can be sent electronically, printed out by the company, and delivered in paper format to local addresses." It looks like "Google Mail" from here on out, at least in the Old Country."
Perception of lawyers (Score:2, Informative)
From the article:
Of course, very few people would describe lawyers on the other side of the courtroom with any 'nice' adjectives, especially lawyers working for a Goliath of a US corporation. Saying 'very evil' is a bit of a strech.
Re:Google farts! (Score:5, Informative)
All in all, a non-issue.
Wrong Country, Wrong Law (Score:3, Informative)
Re:it's not that big of a deal... is it? (Score:2, Informative)
Unless it's restricted stock, I.E. stock that is issued by the company with a restrictive legend. In that case, it can't be sold, until the restriction against selling it is removed.
t's not really the same as receiving its value in cash: it's true that stock can be sold, but at what price, you do not know until you have a commitment from a buyer.
Some clarifications (Score:5, Informative)
2) according to discussions on heise.de this guy has probably registered his trademark between the start of gmail.com and the time google wanted to register gmail.de, they DO own g-mail.de
3) the trademark actually is "G-Mail
4) German trademark law DOES provide ways to see if registering was in "bad faith", and that is not dealt with in the EU, but Germany. That could turn the whole story.
5) He DOES NOT provide service. What he announced is "ready next month" for like all the years since he registered the domain. Probably vaporware.
6) Registering a trademark s.o. else is using in another country and designing vaporware is what 4) is about: straight way to lose the tm.
Some people also told he sort of knew that gmail in the internet was "taken", but discussions did not provide promised sources and no one at heise.de jumped in.
All in all looks like david-goliath, but also symicron-explorer so stay tuned. But keep in mind actual deals of Mr. Giersch are tell tale by himself and not at all confirmed. He might just be some greedy jerk with a rip off scam in trademark law.
Trademark is longer and situation more complex (Score:5, Informative)
This is a pretty lame phrase translating approximately to "G-Mail
Due to the fact that his trademark in principle only covers the full length of the phrase, his standing in courts is not as strong as he pretends, and his registering was very close to google's announcement of their gmail service. His trademark is still challenged in court.
Also, Giersch's company is in "we'll launch very soon, honest!" state for years now, the only progress being in regularly changing website designs. This is not as clear a "innocent David" vs. "corporate Goliath" situation as people outside of Germany tend to see. To me, this guy more looks like our very own tiny SCO.
Trademark since 2001 Feb 24 (Score:3, Informative)
http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://gmail.de [archive.org]
However, the first two archived pages are error messages so it's not clear if this was being used for an email service. If this was a registered trade mark then it wouldn't matter as the Nice Classification for marks is Telecoms (which surely encompasses websites) - I'm not sure how it works with unregistered marks though.
http://oami.europa.eu/CTMOnline [europa.eu] from OHIM (the European TM registry) shows the earliest registration of "gmail" to be by Google Inc. 14/Apr/2004.
As I understand it though, at least in Europe, you have to protect a mark (to maintain it as an designation of origin of goods or service) otherwise you lose your rights to it.
In summary
Re:How will this affect gmail.com? (Score:4, Informative)
Not at all. Nobody claimed otherwise.
> The company is based in the US;
But they operate in the EU as well and have quite some offices, so Google as a cooperation has to adhere to local laws for business they do in the EU. The physical location of the server does not matter.
> they're not marketing gmail.de, it's gmail.com
They are marketing a "GMail" service (no TLD). Google wants to use "GMail" as a name (the domain is just a bonus, the dispute is about the trademark "GMail"), the current owner claims to have older trademark rights to the name in Germany.
> How can the EU prevent its citizens using gmail.com,
They don't prevent you at all. You can go to the US site and register and use this access.
> and require that they use g-mail.de (or whatever) instead?
Currently, Google may not use the name "GMail" for its service in Germany (= advertising and offering a service to the people in Germany under the name "GMail"), as this would infringe an older trademark hold by some other guy. A trademark must not be 100% identical (gmail vs g-mail), if it concerns the same field of business and bears a high probability of being confused (and some other additional conditions). This is the current situation in this legal dispute.
Re:Google farts! (Score:3, Informative)