Google-Louis Vuitton row ruling due
Luxury goods retailer Louis Vuitton and internet giant Google are at loggerheads over the use of the company name as a search word.
Lawyers predict a flood of new legal cases from other high-profile brands if Louis Vuitton succeeds.
A final ruling in the European Court of Justice (ECJ) in Luxembourg is not due until later this year or early next. But the interim legal “opinion” from the court’s Advocate-General is being seen as an indication of the likely outcome.
Louis Vuitton has already won a French court action, successfully claiming that Google acted illegally by allowing other companies to use the Vuitton names as key search words for adverts on Google.
But Google appealed against that verdict, and French judges have asked the European court for a ruling on whether Google’s actions amount to a breach of the EU’s Trade Mark Directive.
Under current Google practice, a user searching the site with trade-marked keywords finds the name of advertisers appearing on the right hand side of the screen under the heading “sponsored links”. In the case of many companies, searches with their trade marks have triggered the appearance in the sponsored links of the names of rivals.
In the case of Louis Vuitton, the retailer’s lawyers have complained that some of the links that appeared when a search was performed using Louis Vuitton’s trade marks were for companies marketing counterfeit or replica goods.
Louis Vuitton says that Google’s “AdWords” service, established in the US and now extended to Europe, enables advertisers to bid on terms like “Louis Vuitton fakes”, and that the right to offer a trademarked name as part of a search advertising programme breaches EU rules.
Google argues that the system helps advertisers reach their target audience and that trademark rights are not breached in the process. – Press Association
- EthiopianReview.com
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