FRANKFURT, Dec 29 (Reuters) - Did you mean Birkenstock?
A German court has ordered Amazon not to lureinternet shoppers to its online marketplace when they mistakenlysearch for "Brikenstock", "Birkenstok", "Bierkenstock" and othervariations in Google.
The ruling is a victory for the German sandal maker, whoserelationship with Amazon has grown increasingly antagonistic. Itconvinced a district court in Duesseldorf that Amazon bookedvariations of "Birkenstock" as keywords through Google AdWords.
Any of those variations would produce search results forBirkenstock shoes sold on Amazon.com, the court said in a rulingdated Dec. 20. Birkenstock sought the injunction because itfeared unsuspecting shoppers might buy low-quality counterfeitsthrough Amazon that would erode its reputation.
Earlier this month, Birkenstock said that it would end thesale of its products over Amazon in Europe after Amazon "failedto proactively prevent" the sale of counterfeit Birkenstockgoods. A year ago, Birkenstock ended its relationship withAmazon in the U.S.
The injunction was first reported by the German magazine DerSpiegel on Friday.
"For us, Amazon is complicit," Birkenstock's chief OliverReichert told Der Spiegel.
A spokesman for the court declined to comment. Amazon didn'timmediately respond to requests to comment by phone and email atits Munich office.(Reporting by Tom Sims, Georgina Prodhan and Sabine Wollrab,editing by Larry King)