LVMH Loses For A Change

Filed Under: Legal Matters LVMH

LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton has gotten a little sue crazy as of late, but it looks like their winning streak has come to an end.

In the European Union's highest court, the luxury brand group just lost to Google Inc. in a six-year-old trademark suit.

In 2003, LVMH sued Google for selling trademarked key words to advertisers, linking search results to advertisements. LVMH claimed trademark infringement and insisted that this method supplied easy access to sites pushing counterfeits.

In 2006, LVMH was the victor when the Paris Central Court ordered Google to hand over 300,000 euros ($443,859) to LVMH for trademark infringement, costing the website the right to their tried-and-true advertising method, their largest source of income.

Google appealed, maintaining there was no infringement and asserting that it's the responsibility of the advertisers, not Google, to impede sales of counterfeits on their sites.

On Tuesday, the tides turned for the search engine when Luis Miguel Poiares Pessoa Maduro, advocate general of the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg, advised that no trademark is being infringed upon by enabling advertisers to purchase trademarked terms as key words to correspond with the sale of the trademarked goods.

At this point, the decision is non-binding, but will soon return to the European Court of Justice before a full panel of judges, who will make an official decision. According to sources, traditionally the full panel agrees with the adviser 80% of the time.

This seems like a fair and reasonable decision. Congrats to Google!

[Image via AP Images.]

Posted: September 23, 2009 at 1:00 pm