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.
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