Interflora wins favorable ruling...or do they?

[anytimeflowers]

Interflora, (the European part of FTD) has sued Marks & Spencer over M&K use of adwords containing interflora as well as other variations.

You can read the article here.

Interflora is ecstatic to have won.......and Marks & Spencer is pretty please that they won. So who won?

The court asked the highest European Union Tribunal to give an opinion before the court rules. The opinion from the tribunal was that Mark's and Spencer could use the words as long as they did no harm to the reputation of Interflora.

It seems Marks & Spencer think they won, because they have no intentions of harming Interflora.

Interflora thinks they won because they think they can prove harm would be done to the consumer.

I would imagine that this is why FTD sent all of those C&D letters to florists who even inadvertently were showing up in google searches, more than likely they feel sooner or later they will have an affiliate who gets too big to compete with and this time the groundwork will already be done.

Even though I have little good to say about either of these, I have to side with Interflora on this. IMO, Marks & Spence is blatantly infringing on a trademark without permission. It will be interesting to see what the high court hands down for a ruling. It could be setting a precedent.

What do you think?

 

[Simon Says]

Interesting....I attach a link to The Lawyer, a trade journal (for lawyers) in the UK. They have a slightly different take on the matter and seem to side with M&S (Marks & Sparks) getting the more favorable reading from the Euro Court of Justice.

http://www.thelawyer.com/domestic-c...emark-rights-after-ecj-ruling/1009518.article


Basically, what was happening in the UK was Interflora (FTD) was faced with instances of them suffering from what (we think) they do to us in search engine results. When the consumer entered, for example, a search into Google in England for "Interflora flowers to London", amongst the Google results was M&S product - note, M&S product, not Interflora product. M&S had purchased several Interflora trademarks as keywords to trigger this link. M&S was not passing off their product as Interflora product but using the Interflora name as a tool to the potential benefit of M&S.

In the Bloomberg Business Week article Linda attaches, Interflora is, indeed, cock-a-hoop over the ruling but, does one detect an instance of Interflora (FTD) "smoke and mirrors"? In the Interflora (FTD) comment they talk about brand holders across Europe being able to assure the consumer about the origin of their goods (in this case, from interflora). However, at no stage has M&S claimed to be passing off their product as Interflora which, had it taken place, be trademark knock-off which is what Interflora sued about. Interflora is blowing smoke to deter one from the fact that M&S was not indulging in counterfeit product activity.

If I put into Google a search for "Anytime Flowers West St. Paul" I get Anytime Flowers but I also get Teleflora, Proflowers, Justflowers and Flowershopping on page 1, FTD, twice, on page 2 along with numerous other "usual suspects".

The one true winner out of all this is Google who, with a ruling by the highest court within the European Union (of 27 nations), now has a clear position on Internet searches in Adwords by trademark competitors that does not automatically give rise to infringement.

Now, would FTD in North America please focus on practising what it preaches in Europe and not use third party names used in an Internet search engine to sell FTD product?

 

[CHR]

So would a 'Better than Interflora' adwords ad fly? How about 'cheaper than Interflora'? The possibilities of getting around the ruling seem endless.

 

[Simon Says]

So would a 'Better than Interflora' adwords ad fly? How about 'cheaper than Interflora'? The possibilities of getting around the ruling seem endless.

Think that might be seen as at least bordering on being detrimental to the trademark Interflora. "A floral alternative to Interflora from Marks & Spencers, the brand you trust": M&S is a huge, long-time (100 yrs) brand in the UK, trusted by the majority.

 

[duanermb]

I like these lawsuits, because I wouldn't have started running my ads. I've gotten really good traffic running "Why use a middle man" ads for FTD etc keywords in my market.

I don't use their trademarks, but offer an alternative as is laid out by the Google AdWords policies.