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Google sues Froogles.com
Google has sued Froogles.com, charging the rival shopping search engine with trademark infringement.
Mountain View, Calif.-based Google, the No. 1 search engine, filed a 68-page complaint against Froogles.com in the Eastern District Court of New York. The complaint alleges that Froogles.com proprietor Richard Wolfe, a New York state resident, illegally traded on Google's famous name and search brand for profit with a "nearly identical" mark.
"Upon information and belief, the defendant selected the mark Froogles with full knowledge of Google's prior rights in its Google name and mark," according to the filing. "As between the parties, Google is the senior user of marks that incorporate the formative--Oogle for Internet search services."
Google asked the court to shut down its rival and order transfer of the domain name, among other relief.
The case is only the latest legal showdown for Google, whose multibillion-dollar advertising and search business has become a wide target for complaints. The search giant faces several trademark infringement cases of its own, including complaints against its paid-search services in the United States and abroad.
The legal spat with Froogles.com goes back more than a year, when Wolfe filed a petition against approval for Google's trademark, Froogle, which was granted in February 2004. The search giant contends in the filing that its rival has instilled false doubt over Google's legal right to the shopping brand.
The proprietor of Froogles.com registered the Web address in December 2000, according to the filing, but did not use the domain for business until July 2002. Google claims that this was four years after it had secured rights to its Google trademarks. Froogles.com registered for a trademark for e-commerce related marketing services in September 2003.
For its part, Google filed a trademark application for Froogle in November 2002, and was granted the mark in February 2004.
Source:
http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9588_22-5676955.html
Google Sues Group Of Polish Poets Over Gmail.pl Name
Google has taken legal action against a group of Polish poets, demanding that they give up their Internet domain name gmail.pl. According to Izabela Krawczyk of GMaiL, which stands for “Grupa Mlodych Artystow I Literatow” or “Group of Young Artists and Writers, Google had turned to the country’s (Poland) IT and telecommunications tribunal to try and stop them using the Web site address,
www.gmail.pl.
Google has said that the group ‘GMAiL has absolutely no rights to the name, which resembles the Search Engine giant’s internationally known e-mail service,
www.gmail.com.
Now that Google’s Gmail is enjoying a whole lot of success these days, this has encouraged the US firm to try and do away with variants of the name which uses national suffixes such as .pl in Polland.
Besides turning to arbitrators and courts to stop so-called cybersquatters from abusing their names on the Inter, companies sometimes pay big sums of money to buy back such domain names.
“We didn’t buy this name just to sell it to Google. As a matter of pride, we’re refusing to give it up. We bought the name legally, with our own money. Nobody gave it to us for free. We refuse to be deprived of what we consider is our property,” said Krawczyk of GMAiL.
Krawczyk also said that Google had not yet proposed a financial settlement, but she claimed that Google’s lawyer had told her that they the US firm had no intention of paying for something that already belonged to them.
In a similar case, Google faced problems after failing to be the first one to register local versions of its domain name in Britain and Germany.
Source:
http://www.techshout.com/internet/2007/17/google-sues-polish-poets-gmailpl-web-site
Also have a look at this thread -
10 U.S Laws Every Domainer Needs to Know!
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