Google loses Gmail trademark case in Germany
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Blog: Google loses appeal of Gmail trademark case in Germany.
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Research in Motion lost part of the case on appeal, but it&#39;s not over until it&#39;s over. Specifically, the patent infringement finding against the maker of the email device was upheld by the appeals court.
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The plaintiff in a long-running  trademark infringement lawsuit against Google Inc agreed on  Friday to drop its case targeting the Web search advertising  leader&#39;s core business, according to court filings.
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Google is threatening to shut down Gmail in Germany after the country's legislature came close to approving surveillance of communications over the Internet.
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Google Inc. has lost a bid to  overturn a Belgian court order that requires it to publish an  earlier ruling forbidding it from reproducing article snippets  on its news amalgamation service.
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(InfoWorld) - Google can't use the Gmail name in Germany because doing so would infringe on someone else's trademark, a German court has ruled. Google regrets the decision by the Hanseatic Higher Regional Court but said the ruling will not affect its ability to offer the Web-based mail service in Germany, Google Senior Legal Counsel Arnd Haller said in a statement. As in the U.K., where it likewise doesn't own the Gmail trademark, Google provides the service under the name "Google Mail" in Germany. "We have also applied for the registration of 'Gmail' as a EU-trademark on the territory of the European Union and are allowed to use it with one exception in Germany and one in the U.K.," said a Google spokeswoman in the U.K. Google launched its Gmail Webmail service in 2004 and owns the "Gmail" trademark in more than 60 countries, according to the company. In Germany, Google launched its Webmail service in 2005, initially under the "Gmail" brand, said Kay Oberbeck, Google's head of communications and public affairs for Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and Scandinavia. However, Google changed the service's name to "Google Mail" after Daniel Giersch objected to the use of the name in Germany and successfully sued the company. The appeals court that sided with Giersch on Wednesday will probably take several months to publish its reasons for reaching its decision, Oberbeck said in a phone interview Thursday. Once Google has had a chance to read the court's grounds for Wednesday's decision, it will decide whether it will drop the matter or try to take it to Germany's Supreme Court, Oberbeck said. Giersch, a 33-year old entrepreneur, said that the German court declared that Google can't use the name "Gmail" in Germany because it would infringe on his "G-mail" trademark. He registered the "G-mail" trademark in Germany in 2000 and has been battling Google in German courts for the past three years, according to Giersch. There are ongoing legal proceedings between Giersch and Google over the "Gmail" name in Spain, Portugal, and Switzerland, according to Giersch. Oberbeck said Google recently took Giersch to court in Austria to prevent him from setting up a business under the Gmail name there. As part of that case's resolution several weeks ago, Giersch signed a cease-and-desist declaration stating he would not offer any services under the "Gmail" name in Europe, excluding Germany and the non-EU countries of Monaco, Norway, and Switzerland, the U.S. spokesman said. However, Giersch takes issue with this account, saying he didn't sign any cease-and-desist declarations as a result of the Austrian case. Giersch said he told the Austrian court what he has told the Switzerland court: That he's only interested in using the "G-mail" name in Germany, Monaco, Norway, and Switzerland. "That's where I registered my marks, that's where I do business, and that's all I want," he said. Google disputes Giersch's assertion that he owns a trademark for "G-mail" at all in Germany. "He owns a colored, succinctly designed word/device mark for the black/yellow logo 'G-mail,'" the Google U.S. spokesman said. That logo can be seen on the home page of Giersch's G-mail company Web site. G-mail, operated by Giersch's P1privat near Hamburg, Germany, provides what Giersch describes as a "hybrid" mail service that combines e-mail and regular mail. Giersch, who is based in Monaco, isn't interested in selling Google ownership of the name in dispute but rather is interested in growing his G-mail business, whose commercial operations he launched in 2000, he said. The G-mail operation has about 10 full-time employees and 45 part-timers and subcontractors. Google doesn't use the Gmail name in the U.K. because it is currently trademarked by someone else. Google representatives didn't know who the owner of the Gmail name is in the U.K. nor whether Google is currently making any attempts to secure the name there. They confirmed the owner isn't Giersch. In Switzerland, both Google and Giersch have the right to use the Gmail name, Oberbeck said. According to Giersch, he will seek to prevent Google's use of the Gmail name in that country.
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(InfoWorld) - Beijing ISM Internet Technology Development Co., the Chinese company behind theÂ Gmail.cn e-mail service, declined to comment on a report that Google has renewed its attempts to acquire the Gmail.cn domain name. An executive who answered the phone at ISM's Beijing headquarters Wednesday said the company was aware of the report, but was unclear about its origins and whether Google had made an offer to buy the Gmail.cn domain name. "When we understand the situation more clearly, we will make an announcement," said the executive, who did not give his name. "We do not comment on rumors and speculation," said Marsha Wang, a Google spokeswoman in Beijing in an e-mail response for comment on a Reuters report, which said ISM had rebuffed a recent Google offer to buy the gmail.cn domain. Google has long coveted the rights to the Gmail.cn domain, first approaching ISM about the domain name and its use of the Gmail name in August 2004. Those talks broke off, and the two companies fell out of contact, an ISM spokeswoman said in 2005. At that time, Google said it was still "investigating" the matter. Google has recently stepped up efforts to acquire sole rights to the Gmail name in Web domains since opening up the free e-mail service to any user who wants an account. The company reportedly turned to lawsuits in several European countries to enforce its rights to Gmail domain names, arguing that the owners areÂ infringing on its trademark. Those lawsuits have not generally proved successful. Since ISM's Gmail predates Google's Gmail, the search company is left with the option of making an offer to buy the domain name from ISM. ISM registered the Gmail.cn domain name -- which it says stands for Global Mail -- on Aug. 1, 2003, according to the China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC), which oversees the .cn top-level domain. That registration predates Google's April 1, 2004, announcement of its Gmail service by eight months. (Steven Schwankert, in Beijing, contributed to this report.) Â
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Google won a major legal victory today when a federal judge said the search engine could continue to sell ads triggered by searches using trademarked company names.
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Google responded on Friday to a lawsuit filed against it by Northeastern University, denying claims that its search service infringes on patented technology.Google denied all charges in the suit, which was&#160;filed jointly by Northeastern, of Boston, and a search technology company called Jarg, of Waltham, Mass. Google also filed a counterclaim asking the court to dismiss the patent as invalid.The&#160;suit was filed in November&#160;in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas. It seeks an injunction preventing Google from further infringement, as well as royalty payments and damages.The patent in question describes a distributed database system that breaks queries into fragments and distributes them to multiple computers in a network to get faster search results.The plaintiffs say that Google uses this system to run its search engine, and that the system was invented by Kenneth Baclawski, an associate professor at Northeastern and one of Jarg&#39;s founders. Northeastern was awarded a patent for the system, which it has licensed exclusively to Jarg.In its response Friday, Google argued that the patent is invalid and should not have been awarded in the first place. It cites various sections of U.S. patent law, including those that deal with the novelty of an invention and prior art. It also cites the doctrine of &quot;laches,&quot; which essentially requires plaintiffs to file lawsuits in a timely manner.Its counterclaim asks the court to declare the patent invalid and unenforceable.Both parties have requested a jury trial, and legal experts have said the case could be resolved in 18 months to two years.The U.S. patent, number 5,694,593, is dated Dec. 2, 1997, and can be viewed by searching the Web site of the U.S. Patent &amp; Trademark Office. U.S. patent law is also described on the USPTO Web site in this PDF file. Google&#39;s reply cites sections 101, 102, 103, and 112.
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A federal appeals court handed Google Inc a setback in a patent fight on Wednesday, tossing out part of a summary judgment in the Web search engine's favor in a lawsuit filed by HyperphRase Technologies, LLC.
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Google Inc. on Saturday published on   its Belgian website a court order which forbids the Internet   search engine to reproduce snippets of Belgian press on its   news amalgamation service.
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The plaintiff in a long-running trademark infringement lawsuit against Google Inc agreed on Friday to drop its case targeting the Web search advertising leader's core business, according to court filings.
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Google Inc. won a major legal victory Wednesday when a federal judge ruled that the search engine's advertising policy does not violate federal trademark laws.
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A federal appeals court handed Google Inc a setback in a patent fight on Wednesday, tossing out part of a summary judgment in the Web search engine's favor in a lawsuit filed by Hyperphrase Technologies, LLC.
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By Stephen Castle  One of Google's most popular services came under threat yesterday when a court banned the search engine from reproducing articles from Belgian newspapers and opened the door to similar challenges elsewhere in Europe.
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Google Inc., fighting to consolidate its trademark globally, faces an obstacle in the world's second-largest Web market: China's Gmail.cn is refusing to sell its Internet address to the US giant.
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Court finds that Google China began using name "Gu Ge" before other company registered it.