Comments on: Interflora sues Marks & Spencer over brand bidding

By: Send Cakes to Pakistan

Send Cakes to Pakistan — Sat, 05 Feb 2011 14:21:21 +0000

All is fair in love and war. That applies to business as well.Interestingly if Inter flora win the case or get an out of court, they have already beneficent from lots of free publicity.

By: Will

Will — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 03:26:04 +0000

“Itâ€™s a surprise Google hasnâ€™t been named party to the suit. After all, they facilitate businesses to bid against each other. ”

I agree; I assumed that they had. This case deserves to be tossed.

By: Associate Money

Associate Money — Sun, 14 Dec 2008 14:33:12 +0000

This will be an interesting court case. It is going to set precedents for future brand bidding.

All is fair in love and war. That applies to business too. Regardless if Interflora win the case or get an out of court settlement, they have already benefitted from lots of free publicity.

By: Adarsh Rangaswamy

Adarsh Rangaswamy — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 10:14:18 +0000

It’s a surprise Google hasn’t been named party to the suit. After all, they facilitate businesses to bid against each other.

It will be interesting to see what stance the companies take. By bidding on broad match terms, Interflora’s campaign triggers M&S flowers, Flying Flowers and a few other flower sites. Even if we did argue that Interflora’s bidding ‘trademark + keyword’ where as M&S is bidding on the trademark itself, then Interflora looses the plot for bidding on Flying Flowers as they are a registered trademark (2330164) in the UK.

By: Patrick Altoft

Patrick Altoft — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 09:02:14 +0000

Will, nobody is suing Google here. You are right that Google (as an intermediary) has a certain level of protection from legal action but this case isn’t against Google.

By: Will

Will — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 21:57:10 +0000

I thought this issue went to court years ago, and Google won. If I’m not mistaken, it went to court in the U.S. It should be interesting to see what the outcome is in the U.K.

By: Mike Lopez

Mike Lopez — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 19:36:59 +0000

I think Interflora is just over-reacting even if they have legal basis on it. Competition is competition and it’s never kind.

By: Patrick Altoft

Patrick Altoft — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 18:27:41 +0000

Sharon I’m pretty sure Interflora is bidding on the term “flowers” as a broad match term rather than “marks & spencer flowers”.

The exact same ad shows up when you search for “branded3 flowers” and I’m sure they’re not bidding on our brand :)

By: Sharon

Sharon — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 18:12:36 +0000

What will happen to interflora because if you do Marks and Spencer flowers, interflora is on there brand bidding on M&S flowers. Me thinks a bit of publicity stunt too from Interflora and they are getting it. I doubt this will go to court but will see