European Court of Justice favours Google in trademark case against Louis Vuitton
Posted by Reggie James | March 23rd, 2010 | Filed under Branding, Google, Reggie James Digital Clarity, Trademark
In the long-running battle in the European Court of Justice between Google and Louis Vuitton, the court today has ruled in favour of Google over the use of the luxury goods company’s trademarked brand names in search advertising.
I originally wrote about this back in March 2009 on the DConstruction blog http://bit.ly/a8GlAN and a year later we have a ruling. The trademark brand keywords issue has been raging for a while now with M&S and Interflora being in court as far back as December 2008 in the classic ‘War of the Roses’ case http://bit.ly/d4hkRW
Louis Vuitton, which is part of the LVMH group of brands including Moet & Chandon and Dior, had argued that Google was acting illegally by allowing other companies to bid for and use its brand names as keywords to trigger ads on its website
European Court of Justice added that companies that use trademarked brand keywords to push sales must be more transparent about who the seller is.
Google comes up smelling of Roses again.
