INTRODUCTION:
According to Kay Oberbeck, Google’s head of communications and public relations for Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and Scandinavia, Google debuted its Webmail service in Germany in 2005, first under the “Gmail” name. However, after Daniel Giersch successfully sued Google over the usage of the name in Germany, Google changed the service’s name to “Google Mail.”
After a long trademark battle, Google has won the right to use its Gmail identity in Germany. Due to Daniel Giersch, who obtained a German trademark for “G-Mail” in 2000, four years before Google established an email service, German users have had @googlemail.com addresses till now. The debate looks to be over now since Google has stated that its German “Google Mail” brand would be renamed Gmail. Everyone having a @gmail.com address will be given the proper @gmail.com address, while all prior addresses will continue to work.
Neither Google nor Giersch has said if any money was exchanged in this transaction, although it seems doubtful that Giersch would just transfer the name to Google without some sort of remuneration. Giersch alleged in 2006 that Google had given him $250,000 for the German trademark rights to the term Gmail.
TRADEMARK DISPUTE IN GERMANY:
Google announced the rebranding of Gmail Deutschland as Google Mail on July 4, 2005. Giersch utilized the name, along with a black and yellow “G-mail” logo, for a mail service that mixes e-mail and traditional mail, which he continues to operate under the name Quabb. Due to trademark issues, the domain gmail.com has become inaccessible in Germany, forcing users to utilize the name googlemail.com. From then on, visitors with an IP address that was found to be in Germany would be sent to googlemail.com, where they could acquire an email address.
Because the domains are interchangeable, users who are required to utilize the googlemail.com domain will be unable to pick addresses that have already been selected by gmail.com users. Inbound emails sent to gmail.com or googlemail.com addresses will be sent to the user.
The German name controversy stems from a trademark dispute between Google and Daniel Giersch, the owner of a German firm called “G-mail,” which offers the service of printing out emails from senders and mailing the print-out to the intended recipients through postal mail. The EU’s Office for Harmonization in the Internal Market decided in favor of Giersch on January 30, 2007. In 2007, the Gmail Paper April Fool’s Day prank parody “offered” the same service. Google was granted the authority to use the Gmail trademark in Germany on April 13, 2012. The gmail.de domain and the Gmail trademark were transferred to Google on that day.
TRADEMARK DISPUTE IN POLAND:
In February 2007, Google initiated a lawsuit against the proprietors of Gmail. pl, a poet collective is known as GrupaModychArtystów I Literatów (GMAiL) (literally, “Group of Young Artists and Writers”). Although the case was lost, the website no longer exists.
Gmail. pl, cost €30,000 in an open auction, compared to around €100 for five years of dot.com registration. Gmail.com’s success is directly connected to the value of Gmail. pl, suggesting the potential benefit of domain name trading. GrupaMlodychArtystow I Literatow (English translation: the Group of Young Artists and Literats), which used the initials GMAiL, did utilize this domain.
TRADEMARK DISPUTE IN UK:
Google was not permitted to use the term Gmail in the UK due to a five-year trademark battle. Due to a disagreement with the UK business Independent International Investment Research, Google renamed the U.k version of Gmail to Google Mail on October 19, 2005. Users who signed up for Gmail before the transition to Google Mail preserved their addresses, however, the Gmail logo was replaced with the Google Mail logo. Independent International Investment Research claimed to have been the first to utilize “Gmail” in 2005. Google deleted the domain after claiming that the compensation IIR requested was “exorbitant.” Gmail became Google Mail less than a year after it was launched as a free e-mail service in the United Kingdom.
Early adopters were given a gmail.com address, but all new accounts after that were given the suffix googlemail.com. “We anticipate that this name change will save about 60 million keystrokes each day,” said software developer Greg Bullock on Google’s Gmail blog. Users having Googlemail addresses in the United Kingdom will be asked if they want to change their address. According to Google, this will have no impact on the accounts’ settings or functioning.
Following the settlement of the trademark case, Google began rebranding UK accounts as Gmail in September 2009. On May 3, 2010, Google announced that the googlemail.com domain would be phased down in the United Kingdom. Users using Android phones were also forced to do a factory reset (which required a backup to prevent data loss) to restore phone functioning.
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