LV Has No Love for Google

Google gets no love from the luxury retailer Louis Vuitton. It took the world's largest search engine to court in Paris back in 2003. Louis Vuitton claims that Google was infringing on its trademark rights when it sold certain sponsored links with key search words such as "vuitton". Louis Vuitton claims that Google does not have the right to sell trademark protected names to advertisers when those trademark protected words are used in a key word search.

Google appealed a Parisian high court decision in favor of Louis Vuitton this past Tuesday in the highest EU Court. Here is an excerpt from Business Report:

"'Google makes money not by reason of the nature of the keyword but by someone clicking on the keyword,' Google lawyer Alexandra Neri told a 15-judge panel of the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg.

The case is the EU tribunal's first on whether companies in the 27-nation region can block search engines from using trademarked brand names to trigger search results. Internet ads tied to search results generate most of Google's revenue."

The outcome of this case is expected to be announced in 2010. It is considered to be a pivotal case for the new expanding area of e-commerce.

Does Counterfeiting Create "Bad Seeds"?

It seems that on top of all of the other evils that counterfeiting produces, it also creates a tendency among its consumers to be less moral. According to a blog written by the New York Times, a study has been done about the moral implications of counterfeit consumption. The study found that individuals who were told that they were wearing counterfeit sunglasses were more likely to cheat on tests than individuals who were told that they were wearing real sunglasses.

From NYT post:

“The effect on morality, people don’t anticipate,” said Prof. Dan Ariely, the author of “Predictably Irrational,” who conducted the studies. “We asked them if wearing fakes would get people to cheat more, they didn’t think it has an effect.”

It seems that most consumers do not even realize the impact of their choices, but there is a subconscious effect. Consumers tend to cheat more when they realize that their peers are cheating. Consumers also tend to purchase more counterfeits when they realize their peers are doing it as well.

This study also asked consumers how authentic they would feel with one, two or three counterfeit items. The researchers found that once the consumer wore at least one counterfeit item, it was easier to wear two or three. This indicates that once a consumer starts to wear counterfeit items, it is easier to keep buying counterfeits than if they never started at all.

To read more about this study, the moral effects of counterfeits, and the impact of branding, check out the NYT post here:

http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/03/16/the-moral-costs-of-counterfeiting/