Beverage giant Coca-Cola is about to consider filing a lawsuit against Google – the 800 lbs gorilla of search engines – in Kenya of all places.
Coca-Cola is very protective of their trademarks, one of which is “Coke“.
“It’s ridiculous that Google was allowed to violate our trademark”, said Julia Goulia of Coca-Cola Corporation.
“It doesn’t matter that it’s not in a large country, what matters is that it’s accessible through the Internet”, added Goulia.
The culprit appears to be the domain name Google.co.ke – which serves as the default Google search engine for all Kenyans accessing the Internet.
“Seeing our trademarked ‘Coke’ after the Google brand is unacceptable”, said Julia Goulia. “We will ask the Kenyan government to re-allocate the URL so that it does not confuse our customers who think Coke is sponsoring Google”, she added.
The case will most likely be decided by Kenyan tribesmen, as opposed to a UDRP. It is common for local tribunals to decide on such important cases, after sacrificing a rooster and a goat to the ccTLD gods.
