I think issues of trademarks become more difficult as products and servics increasingly go online. In the example above, it's a classic case of whether a trademark granted in Germany should also apply to services hosted elsewhere but accessed within Germany. If I wanted a gmail.com address, then I'll just sign up using www.gmail.com (possibly using US proxy or something).

[Signature removed. -Philipp]

so... "Google Mail" for all Europeans?

It's Google Mail in the UK, too, other than for those who opened their accounts early.

Google Mail for all Europeans

[URL removed – Tony]

if gmail changes to google mail what happens to your address??

Will email sent to yournamegmail.com be redirected or will nothing change except the name?

to quote someone smart from Slashdot (http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/01/31/2116245&from=rss)

<<1) There are ongoing disputes still in court. This is not the end of the story

2) according to discussions on heise.de this guy has probably registered his trademark between the start of gmail.com and the time google wanted to register gmail.de, they DO own g-mail.de

3) the trademark actually is "G-Mail ... und die Post geht richtig ab!" whole slogan WITH hyphen.

4) German trademark law DOES provide ways to see if registering was in "bad faith", and that is not dealt with in the EU, but Germany. That could turn the whole story.

5) He DOES NOT provide service. What he announced is "ready next month" for like all the years since he registered the domain. Probably vaporware.

6) Registering a trademark s.o. else is using in another country and designing vaporware is what 4) is about: straight way to lose the tm.

Some people also told he sort of knew that gmail in the internet was "taken", but discussions did not provide promised sources and no one at heise.de jumped in.

All in all looks like david-goliath, but also symicron-explorer so stay tuned. But keep in mind actual deals of Mr. Giersch are tell tale by himself and not at all confirmed. He might just be some greedy jerk with a rip off scam in trademark law>>

Bas, e-mail sent to yournamegmail.com is delivered to yournamegooglemail.com (and vice versa). As far as I can tell, the effective difference is that your outgoing mail is addressed as coming from yournamegooglemail.com, and when you're using the Gmail interface, you see a Google Mail logo in place of the Gmail logo. Your Google ID is under googlemail.com too.

Great post, cia.