Google Loses Second French Trademark Lawsuit
from the sense-a-trend... dept
Coming just weeks after a French court seemed to misunderstand the purpose of trademarks a second French court has ruled that Google cannot sell ads based on trademarked keywords. This time, the case was brought by Louis Vuitton Malletier. Here, the argument appears to make a bit more sense on its face, as it wasn't competitors that LVM was worried about, but counterfeiters selling products to people who searched on the Louis Vuitton name. Except... that's wrong. Louis Vuitton Malletier should be going after the counterfeiters, not Google. The counterfeiters are the ones who are breaking trademark law by advertising products that aren't actually Louis Vuitton. So, why is Google involved at all? They're just offering the platform by which these ads are placed and shouldn't be responsible at all for the content of those ads. Furthermore, as long as the ads aren't confusing buyers about the nature of the products, then there's no reason for it to be trademark infringement. It's just in cases where there is confusion -- and then it's the company doing the confusing that should be taken to court.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
No Subject Given
Dude� seriously� they are French�
Stop trying to figure them out.
These are the same people who have a �don�t ask don�t tell� policy about the exercise of religion.
They are wicky in the wacky woo. Don�t take them so seriously.
Besides, tomorrow morning when Google blocks access to their servers to all of France� the French courts might reconsider. After all, LVM isn�t going to refuse to sell overpriced purses in France as a result, and even if they do, the knockoffs won�t stop selling them� and you could still zip over to England to pick up a �genuine� 1000euro purse if you MUST have it� But what are you going to use to search is not Google? MSN? Yahoo? Not likely.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Correlation?
In neither case is it the responsibility of the network owner to keep tabs on weather the goods are genuine or fake, copyrighted or not.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Correlation?
Google on the other hand is running a completely legitimate and innocent operation. This case is like the US Postal Service for losing a court case because someone used them to mail out ads for counterfeit jeans. Yeah right, how stupid.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Correlation?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Re: Correlation?
[ link to this | view in chronology ]