Daniel Giersch is a venture capitalist who also owns and runs a
physical and electronic postal service in Germany called G-Mail. In
an exclusive interview with weekly technology law podcast OUT-LAW Radio his trade mark lawyer Sebastian
Eble said that money would not be able to buy Giersch's compliance
with Google's wishes.
"The German lawyers of Google contacted me and respectively
Daniel in order to ask what was his aim and if he was ready to sell
his trade mark for US$250,000," said Eble. "But Daniel made it
clear from the beginning that he had never had the goal to sell his
trade mark."
"Daniel is a millionaire so you know, €250,000 is for Daniel not
a big amount of money and on your other hand his aim or his goal is
to do big business with this G-mail trademark. G mail is a little
bit like Daniel’s baby so it was never a question for him to sell
his trade mark," said Elbe. "Even if they would, I do not know,
offer him millions I do not think that Daniel would sell it because
it is like his little baby, Giersch-mail, so it is named
G-mail."
Giersch won a preliminary injunction then a full injunction to
stop Google calling its web based email service Gmail in Germany,
making it the only country apart from the UK in which the service
is not called Gmail. A similar case in the UK has forced Google
into branding the service Google Mail here.
The full injunction is being appealed by Google, which announced
plans to launch its service in 2004. Giersch, though, registered
his trade mark long before that.
"He applied for this trade mark in the year 2000 and the trade
mark seeks protection for postal service on the one hand but also
email services and telecommunications," said Elbe. "He then started
using his trademark G-mail for email services and
telecommunications in the year 2003."
"I think in November 2004 he heard that Google was starting
email service named G-mail in the United States so his lawyers
contacted Google, I think, in November or December 2005 but Google
had at that time not shown any interest to talking to Daniel," said
Eble.
Giersch also has trade marks in G-mail in Norway, Monaco and
Switzerland, where he is pursuing action to protect his trade
marks.
