欧洲的最高法院周二做出的一项具有里程碑意义的裁决,将明确用户在使用搜索引擎搜索路易-威登等品牌名称时伴随搜索结果出现广告的情况是否违反 欧洲的商标法。
A landmark ruling at Europe's highest court on Tuesday will determine whether advertisements that pop up alongside Internet search results when consumers search for brand names such as Louis Vuitton violate European trademark laws.
欧洲法院(European Court of Justice)还将裁决,如果谷歌公司(Google Inc.)网站上的广告为商标侵权,那么这家互联网巨头是否有可能担负法律责任。
European Court of Justice will also rule whether Internet giant Google Inc. can be held liable for any breaches of trademarks in advertisements that appear on its Web site.
如果该法院做出不利于谷歌的裁决,那将对互联网搜索行业产生深远影响。谷歌、雅虎(Yahoo Inc.)、微软(Microsoft Inc.)的必应(Bing)和其他搜索引擎就是靠允许广告商把自己的广告标上特殊的搜索关键词、常常是著名品牌,来获取巨额收入。
A finding against Google will have wide implications for the multibillion dollar Internet search industry where Google, Yahoo Inc., Microsoft Inc.'s Bing and other search engines generate valuable revenue by enabling advertisers to tag their ads to particular search words, often famous brands.
德国杜塞尔多夫律师事务所年利达(Linklaters)的知识产权律师Fabian Ziegenaus说,登广告的人喜欢采用名牌来做关键词,因为这些关键词在搜索中被经常使用,而这种办法也吸引了大量客户。
'Advertisers like to use famous marks as keywords because they are regularly used in searches and this attracts a lot of customers,' said Fabian Ziegenaus, an intellectual property lawyer at Linklaters in Dusseldorf, Germany.
裁决结果还将在欧洲首次明确,商标持有人可以在多大程度上限制其品牌在网上的使用。
The ruling will also set out for the first time in the EU how far trademark owners can restrict online use of their brands.