Google vs LVMH - Google loose.

Google have just lost a landmark trademark case in the appeals court in France - LVMH (Luis Vuitton Moet Hennessy) claimed Google were unfairly selling their trademarks to 3rd parties (including counterfieters) via AdWords:

Vuitton’s efforts are aimed at making the search engine more of an advertising/marketing service for the merchant than a research service for the customer. The Web’s roots suggest it’s intended to be more of a populist tool.

This is a pretty far reaching verdict, even if it was in a French court. What happens to search result quality if Google cannot sell trademarked keywords to third parties? And how many words does that leave? Given AdWords contributes most to Google’s overall revenue I’d be nervous if I held Google stock now.

It’ll be interesting to see how this one pans out. Can/will the big brand owners follow suit in the US courts? How can Google accomodate this ruling given the vast sets of trademarked words in different jurisdictions?

Friday, June 30th, 2006 blogging, google

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