The Fashion Industry Fights Makers of Fake Designer Bags and Accessories
Try searching for Louis Vuitton or any other august fashion stalwart on Google, and a lot of the time, you'll find near the top of your results, a tempting set of offers for fine designer stuff at unbelievable discounts. You could consider yourself unlucky if you didn't see anything going for less than half off. There's just a little problem. It isn't really 50% off on Louis Vuitton bags - it's just on stuff that happens to look like it - fake fashion. This situation alone - that the fashion majors should have that deal with ripoffs like this, is bad enough. But adding insult to injury, any time a fashion major tries to get the most out of Google search by using its brand name as a keyword, it finds that cyber squatters have gone and bought those keywords already, to get their names up for their fake designer bags and other merchandise.
In fact, things have gotten so bad that companies that get the short end of the stick in the fake business have been appealing to Google to stop giving out registered keywords for sale to unauthorized people. And the courts in Europe are set to rule on whether what Google does is even legal. The entire modern business model the world has of using the Internet as an advertising vehicle could go down the tubes if things were allowed to run this way. It's not like American fashion houses have let this go lightly either. There have been lawsuits, and Google has paid money to settle out of court. So there is no clear legal precedent that anyone has been able to see yet. Google feels it does take a reasonable level of care with its whole keyword reservation system on AdWords. It doesn't allow any unauthorized advertiser to use registered trademarks on the content on a fake website. And when it finds a website selling fake designer bags or other fake merchandise, if the real company complains, Google will stop listing that website. They thought this was enough.
But Google wants to continue to be allowed to sell brand names as keywords to all kinds of parties because when the general user tries to search for, say, Fendi, they don't just want to get to the Fendi website - they want information on the company's history, different product reviews, what Vogue magazine has to say about it, and so on. And if those contributing websites want their pages on the top 10 on Google's search results, buying those keywords would be the only way. Wherever Google has stopped selling brand name keywords, usually, they were made to by court rulings - like in France. Google's practices in the US have to be among the most lax anywhere. As far as Google is concerned, nothing stops Pepsi, for instance, from using Coca-Cola's new brand name in a derogatory way all over its website. And this is a strange anomaly - anywhere else in the physical world, no one can use a registered trademark in the way that the authorized holder should object to.
Google hates to let this go, because it makes major money selling registered keywords to lots of bidders. Louis Vuitton and Google have been trying to get this whole mess sorted out for years. So far, the fashion major has been unsuccessful in getting Google to stop helping out the fake designer bags industry. The courts so far have felt it hurts no one is really going to be led into thinking that you can get Louis Vuitton for $100. So the company, they feel, really has no serious problem. But the company does have a point when it complains that with all these bidders for its brand name on Google, it has to pay Google much more than it otherwise would for each click.
7:19 PM