It will be interesting to see if Google wins this one since the site doesn't have anything to do with online e-mail.
I think offering money would weaken their case (and future ones) that claims the domain is rightfully theres. Pete
Interesting case. Their site title is Grupa Mtodych Artystow i Literatow, or GMAIL for short. My polish is non-existent but it looks to me to be something like Group of Literary Artists. Not sure what the Mtodych word means. The acronym fits perfectly with who they are and nothing about the site and its content is in any way related to e-mail and Google. I think they might have a good case for keeping it. Will be interesting to see what the Polish courts say.
axemedia it's not "Mtodych" but "MÅ‚odych" and it means: young. "Group of Young Artists and Writers". By the way they've tried to sell the domain on an polish auction site (very similiar to Ebay). They got offers in hunderds of dollars and changed their mind. I bet Google is going to use this as a proof their idea was only to get money.
I know that. A "t" is the closest thing I got on my keyboard. Call it Polish leet speak. That went the way of the Dodo at about the time Google shares went above $300
exactly. i know because my dad is in a similar story (well offline not online). he was dismissed unfairly by a conglomerate, and he filed a suit against them. they spent TEN YEARS (and god knows how much money) preventing the case from being heard (bribing judges, paying someone to destroy the evidence files, etc). they could've just paid my dad the $1m he is asking for compensation, but they didn't want to, because doing that is bad for their PR. It shows the public (and its international clients) that it had unfairly dismissed a former employee.
Gmail is not trademarked in Europe to Google, but rather to the gmail.de owner Giersh. If anything, it appears google are trying to bully small time webmasters into handing over domain names that Google are not legally entitled to own as they do not have the European Trademark. Perhaps Daniel Giersch would win a case if he had a european wide trademark, but his may have only been in Germany. The polish site was not intending to profit by selling back to google nor are they in a competing environment. It would throw the previous rulings into doubt if google were to win this - unless they could prove that the polish site was 'cybersquatting' then that is a different story.
They intended to sell it right after they bought it. They put on an auction through allegro.pl (an Ebay kind of site) but didn't get money they hoped for. It's all a trick (a good one )