Google says they’re considering whether to appeal a French court ruling ordering damages plus costs to Louis Vuitton, the luxury goods maker that sued the search kings over showing ads for rivals selling copies along with search results for Vuitton itself.
The court in Paris held Google guilty of breach of trademark, false publicity, and counterfeiting, according to reports from Europe, and fined Google $260,000 plus costs, as well as ordering Google to stop showing ads for rivals when users type in the Louis Vuitton name or other company trademarks or slogans.
A Google spokesperson for the search engine’s French operation told reporters the company was studying the ruling and pondering an appeal, though no decision was made at this writing as to whether they would file.
Louis Vuitton parent LVMH hailed the ruling as helping prove that Google’s sponsored links program misled buyers. "Sending Internet users to these other sites made it seem as if their products were Louis Vuitton, when in fact they were fakes," LVMH spokesman Olivier Labesse said in a statement.
This wasn’t the first time Google’s AdWords program has run afoul of French courts. A court west of Paris fined the search kings in October 2003 for similar trademark violation involving Internet tour operator Bourse des Vols, a decision Google has appealed. In the interim, Le Meridien Hotels and Resorts got a preliminary injunction against Google in December, involving similar litigation against the AdWords program.
By contrast, a U.S. federal court ruled in December that Google did not violate federal trademark laws.
Google is also under litigation from Adult magazine and image provider Perfect 10, which hit Google with a lawsuit in late November for contributory copyright infringement, on grounds that searches in Google led surfers to an estimated 800,000 unauthorized links to Perfect 10 content.
That suit was filed just days after another court held that Visa and MasterCard couldn’t be held liable for Websites infringing Perfect 10 content, a ruling the magazine has appealed.
U.S. courts have so far shown more tolerance toward Google's advertising policy. A judge ruled in December that it did not violate federal trademark laws.
But some analysts say the tougher line on trademarks taken by French courts could nevertheless spell trouble for the $1.6 billion paid-search industry – which now accounts for almost one-third of all U.S. online advertising.
The latest Paris ruling against Google Inc. applies to all its sites, not just its French Google.fr page. Searches for "Louis Vuitton" and "Vuitton" conducted Monday on the main Google.com portal yielded none of the usual sponsored links to other companies.
In late morning trading Monday, Google shares fell $2.86, or 1.4 percent, to $201.50 on the Nasdaq Stock Market.
