Wednesday, October 19, 2005

Wed - Google to re-brand Gmail in UK and Germany

Following two trademark disputes in the UK and Germany Google is forced to re-brand their Gmail email service to Googlemail in both countries. All new email accounts in both countries will carry the name Googlemail from now on.

It seems as though Google will continue to fight the disputes in the courts. Given that the UK and Germany are the two most important countries for them in the EU, this is a blow to Google.

Mind you, why don't they just buy the companies they infringe off? I'll tell you why - the UK claimant, Independent International Investment Research, a small Aim-listed UK company that supplies financial research, not only argued that the Google service infringes on the trademark of its own G-Mail service in some 80 countries, but the company also said that an independent assessment had valued its rights in the name at £25m-£34m. That means Google could have to pay upto $60M to use Gmail in the UK!!

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