Sean Barrett sean@epoptic.com said:
On the other hand, sparkling wine from California ''is'' called champagne. Trademarks, especially in the international arena, are seldom absolute.
We are not talking about international trademark issues here, Larousse has registered their mark in the United States (see previous post) and is using it in the United States for English encyclopedia publications.
Regarding the use of the word champagne in the United States (excuse me but I am Canadian) that is because the word champagne is not recognized as being a trademark in the United States, it is considered to have a regular meaning in the dictionary.
This comparison is thus inappropriate because there is no word "larousse" in American English dictionaries. Words like macintosh (a type of apple), and champagne (in the US) are words that have regular meaning and cannot be trademarked, even IF they can be trademarked for a fanciful use it is limited to the product that they are marking until the TM becomes so well known as to take on a secondary meaning, or it becomes so widespread that it becomes the same as the product it marks such as in singer, which was once a word that meant sewing machine (but no more) or xerox copy, which many people still use when they mean photocopy. Campagne is a trademark (and even an origin of appellation mark) that is recognized in many countires. It is one of the reasons that these products need to be relabeled in these countries as "sparkling wines".
Larousse does not appear to fit into the category of champagne, macintosh, xerox or any other exceptions. The only exception would be if it were not used, or that it was being used in a different class than it was registered. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, it cannot use larousse, a trademark registered in the US to be used for enclyclopedias in the US. Using it as a mark to allow people to recognize Wikipedia under trademark law (with all the previous caveats added here by reference) appears to be infringement and may create confusion between Wikipedia and Larousse. Using it as a subdomain name, in my opinion does not protect it from confusion, it as if Pepsi had a web site called www.coca-cola.pepsi.com. I doubt that Coca-Cola would tolerate such an infringement.
I agree with Lars Aronsson (lars@aronsson.se) regarding the fact pattern as presented -- use of a trademarked encyclopedia name would likely be considered infringement and I doubt that if the TM owner found out about it that they would tolerate it. At this point the infringement is probably de minimus and would only lead to nominal damages ($1), but if it started popping up in search engines I am sure Wikipedia would hear from Larousse's US trademark representatives who would be probably more than happy if Wikipedia agrees to cease and desist using such a mark.
Alex756