Germany Rules Against Google On Gmail Trademark, Gmail In Germany To Shut Down?

Google loses Gmail trademark case in Germany from News.com reports that Google has lost the Gmail trademark case in a German appellate court. Google will not be allowed to use Gmail in Germany, like they can’t in the United Kingdom and Switzerland. Google Threatens to Close German Gmail Due to Local Law from Google Blogoscoped […]

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Google loses Gmail trademark case in Germany from News.com reports that Google has lost the Gmail trademark case in a German appellate court. Google will not be allowed to use Gmail in Germany, like they can’t in the United Kingdom and Switzerland.

Google Threatens to Close German Gmail Due to Local Law from Google Blogoscoped reports that Google may close down the Gmail service in Germany due to privacy concerns. Philipp Lenssen explains that local German law may require Google to require full addresses of Gmail users, severely impacting user anonymity.


Postscript: It is not official, Google loses Gmail name in Germany from Vnunet reports:

Google has lost the right to the Gmail name in Germany following a court ruling over the trademarked G-Mail name.

The Hanseatic Higher Regional Court ruled that Google’s use of ‘Gmail’ in the region breached the ‘G-Mail’ trademark owned by local businessman Daniel Giersch.


About the author

Barry Schwartz
Staff
Barry Schwartz is a technologist and a Contributing Editor to Search Engine Land and a member of the programming team for SMX events. He owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on very advanced SEM topics.

In 2019, Barry was awarded the Outstanding Community Services Award from Search Engine Land, in 2018 he was awarded the US Search Awards the "US Search Personality Of The Year," you can learn more over here and in 2023 he was listed as a top 50 most influential PPCer by Marketing O'Clock.

Barry can be followed on X here and you can learn more about Barry Schwartz over here or on his personal site.

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