Vuitton loses battle with Google.

(From The Journal)

INTERNET giant Google has won the latest round of a legal tussle over trademarks in which luxury goods retailer Louis Vuitton is fighting to prevent search engines using protected brand names.

Louis Vuitton has already won a French court action, successfully claiming that Google acted illegally by allowing other companies to use the Vuitton names as a key search words for adverts on Google.

But in an interim legal "opinion" in the EU's highest court, an Advocate-General said Google had not infringed trademark rights by allowing advertisers to buy keywords corresponding to registered trademarks. The French appeal court sent the case to the …