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A Chinese company is suing Google's China subsidiary for copying its name, saying the U.S. search engine's registered Chinese name is too similar to its own and has harmed its operations.A spokesman for Beijing Guge Science and Technology Ltd. Co. said Google's commercial name had led to the company being constantly disturbed by people calling up its office trying to contact the search engine.
"We just want Google to change their commercial name," Tian Yunshan, a company official, told Reuters on Friday. "We have already passed our demands on to Google ... We will see what happens in court."
China Company to Sue Google Over Name [uk.reuters.com]
P!
Obviously trying to extort some cash...or at least publicity...which has worked already.
"We just want Google to change their commercial name,"
Hilarious!
China - the land of the new. And innovative! :-)
"We just want Google to change their commercial name,"
I swear this suit has nothing to do with money.
Guge and Google is not even simliar
Uhh... HELLO! Read the first post.
registered Chinese name
All the comments so far have been based on the English names of those companies.
How many of you people actually even know what the Chinese names for those companies are?
How many of you speak Chinese?
What makes you qualified, then, to say whether or not the names are similar or whether or not there has been infringement?
How many of you speak Chinese?
No one speaks Chinese, do they? It's Mandarin, Cantonese, or some local dialect...
Like Google says, its all about localization. Google messed up, should be fun.
No one speaks Chinese, do they?
Actually, my in-laws always refer to it as speaking Chinese, unless they happen to be in a context where it might be unclear and then they differentiate Mandarin, Cantonese, Beijing-wa or what have you. In the case of PRC trademark, I think one can assume Mandarin, though I have no idea.
Both names are in Chinese characters and are pronounced gu-ge in Mandarin.
Thank you.
Google says to call itself 'GUGE' in China [forbes.com]04.12.2006 - BEIJING (AFX) - Google said it has adopted the Chinese-language brand name 'GUGE' for its Chinese operations.
At a conference in Beijing, company chief executive Eric Schmidt said the new name demonstrated Google's commitment to China.
The name 'guge' (Harvest Song in Chinese) was not popular [webmasterworld.com] among the Chinese and there was a site that campaigned against the use of this name NoGuGe.com. That site is no longer active.
You may also be interested to know who owns the domain name Guge.com and where it redirects.
They even got the .cn name years ago...
Domain Name: guge.cn
Registration Date: 2003-12-03 11: 32
Name Server: ns2.google.com
So, the question is, was this company doing business and known locally, regionally, nationally or internationally as "guge" or held some sort of legal mark which could be interpreted to be similar to "guge" before Google registered the names? And is "guge" a generic term?
U.S. law wasn't clear on this at first, (pre WIPO), and some companies lost out if their mark was also a generic term --- like "united.com"; where United Airlines, United Van Lines or First United Church could have grabbed the name...
This company "guge" is actuaully named:
Beijing Guge Science and Technology Ltd
I wondered if there is anything with "Guge" is the name that wasn't associated with either Google or the plaintiff:
"Guge, or Tsamda (Zhada), is one of the three regions of Ngari, situated to the South-west of Mount Kailash and bordering India on the west"
Wilkin Guge Marketing
Ruins of Guge Kingdom
"guge" at 43things..
Al, Beth, Sara, Robert and many other people with the sir name "Guge"...
and the already registered: "china-guge" dotcom....
This is as hilarious as a friend of mine who worked at myinternet once. A lady called claiming she can't dial in anymore (90s).
"Aren't you guys running the Internet...?"
In South Germany we refer to the term GaGa as something stupid, unworthy to take serious. Wondering how this would be pronounced in other dialects or languages. Close to Google?
You betcha! What isn't today?
There is a trademark law in China?
There is any kind of free court in China?What's your definition of a free court? They certainly have court systems in China. According to wikipedia [en.wikipedia.org], "The Chinese court system is based on civil law, modeled after the legal systems of Germany and France.
