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Gmail trademark trouble in Europe

February 24, 2007 by aleks | 2 Comments
Filed Under Online

Google Mail - GMAILGoogle has recently lost another trademark dispute in Europe. The Zurich Commercial Court in Switzerland ruled that Google can’t have control on their own on the GMail trademark in Switzerland, because previously Daniel Giersch has registered G-Mail for his e-mail service Giersch mail. Google tried to convince the court that Giersch has registered this trademark in a bad manner, but the court overruled that claim. Now because the Swiss law doesn’t previously check whether it is a trademark or not, both Giersch and Google can use Gmail for their respective services.
Daniel Giersch is also known for his similar trademark dispute with GMail in Germany, where he has the same G-Mail email-postal service. But in this case, Google on July 4th, 2005 has renamed the Gmail Deutschland service in Google Mail, and the domain for the addresses also to googlemail.com. Giersch has also registered the GMail domain in Norway and in Monaco.

In Poland, the domain gmail.pl is registered by a polish group of poets. Google has also filed a complaint to the polish court, claiming that this domain has been registered by a cybersquatter, and back in November had a sign that it’s for sale.

Google has also trouble with the trademark name in the United Kingdom. On October 19th, 2005 GMail in the UK was renamed to Google Mail, because the trademark was registered by another company. After that, all new users in the UK had @googlemail.com addresses and the Gmail logo in the upper left corner was changed to Google Mail.

You can read more on ZDNet news.

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2 Comments so far

  1. Martin on September 12, 2007 11:16 am

    Thank you very much for this precise info. I ask myself… and so on… now I know.

  2. Your trademark on May 27, 2008 8:12 pm

    I didnt realize there had been so many disputes over the name “gmail” thanks for the information!

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