August 14, 2004

Yet another goof up by Google. Our favorite search engine company goofs up by not registering Gmail, their much sought-after email service.

Google Inc. is now fourth in the line at the USPTO for trademarking "Gmail", for which they applied seven days after announcing the service. There are four other live applications for the trademark (1, 2, 3 and 4) now. All this, apart from the trademark conflicts on "Google" and "Froogle" also.

posted by rubricks 20 years ago
  • Interesting but I'm guessing this will all be settled out of court... Google should have plenty of cash to do it. [I've confirmed my own lameness still not having a Gmail account... now that the fad's over, where can I get one?]
  • You can write an email to me, my addy's in my profile. Will be glad to give you an invite :)
  • Probably nothing that money can't fix. Microsoft didn't own the name "Internet Explorer" before launching their browser. Instead they argued that "internet" and "explorer" were generic terms**. Eventually they had to shell out 5 million dollars to the owner of the name. ** these are that same guys that tried to sue other people for using the word "bookshelf" btw
  • Strange that I never really considered that trademark squatting could be possible (and profitable). But at $320 a shot I guess it's not like you can go buy 100 permutations of younghotboobs.com .
  • I have a GMail invitation, if any of you want it. First come first serve.
  • ...But at $320 a shot... $335 per class, where there are 45 classes of goods & services comes to... $15075.00 and thats just to apply, so thats non-refundable regardless as to whether they actually approve your application for registration. Never mind the subsequent Section 8 & 15 filing due after 5 years of use, or the Section 8 & 9 due after the ninth year of use... pardon me. < /ptdlfilter>
  • Well, I've resisted till now, but Mfpb, guess I need to get modern. One of my other email addresses is in my profile.