Against the Yellow Pages Cartel in Europe

The European directorys of professionals are named: Pages Jaunes or Yellow Pages, Gelbe Seiten.

The yellow pages first emerged in the United States.

In 1883, the Wyoming Telephone Company asked a local printer to create the first ever directory. However, this printer had no white paper in stock, only yellow.

They decided to print onto this paper anyway. The book was a huge success. It was the public who were using it decided to name it after its primary defining attribute: The Yellow Pages.

In 1886, Reuben Donnelley has an idea to improve it. He separates individuals, by name, and profession, classified by area of activity. To navigate more easily, he assigns a color to each category; thus creating the white pages and yellow pages.

The Yellow Pages or Pages Jaunes, Gelbe Seiten now exist in 76 countries!

Whether in the United States, Europe, or in most other parts of the world, the terms “Pages Jaunes” “Gelbe Seiten” or “Yellow Pages” are a common household name that has existed for decades as the name for the local telephone directory.

In multiple countries, the Yellow Pages are known by a different name:

France: Yellow Pages SA (PagesJaunes.fr)

Monaco: Monaco Telecom (PagesJaunesMonaco.com)

Belgium pagesdor.be (Antwerpen) (PagesJaunes.be)

Switzerland: Swisscom Directories AG / LTV Yellow Pages Ltd. (GelbeSeiten.ch / PagesJaunes.ch)

Germany: DeTeMedien GmbH (GelbeSeiten.de)

Austria: HEROLD Business Data (GelbeSeiten.at)

All these companies are members of the Union YellowPages (yellowpagestoday.dk), and they meet every year to keep consistency between them.

These companies have the goal of controlling the market in an attempt to make it difficult for any new competitors and to maximize their profits, regardless of their effect on all other small companies.

These companies have filed several very vague trademarks and logos. They are also granted an exclusive right to use this very common words.

When they come before the courts, the results are always the same. The big groups summon the small companies to whichever court they have chosen (which is illegal), and then fill their legal team with expert lawyers specializing in intellectual property law. This type of lawyer is incredibly expensive and it is impossible for a small company to afford a lawyer of similar calibre – which then leads to them going bankrupt and closing.

These companies have excuse use of the color “Yellow” and the word “Pages” (both in multiple languages) and they take any small company who uses these trademarks in their domain name to court.

Even the OHIM (Office of Harmonization for the Internal Market) has stated multiple times that these words are “descriptive, devoid of any distinctive character and part of everyday usage”.

The list of victims of these companies is huge (available on request due to A-D-W-O-R-D-S), due to the courts always deciding in favour of the bully big companies rather than the small.

We find that the practise of these companies is abusive and unlawful. The Yellow Pages Union in Europe is acting like a cartel, which is illegal.

The Anti-Competitive Behaviour Mafia.

The purpose of this petition is to stop the abuse of trademarks consisting of generic, everyday words! We ask for sanctions to be made by the European Commission, we ask that the companies in the cartel be condemned and the victims should be compensated.

Sign this petition if you disagree with these practices.

We stand against abuse of the trademarking system by generic names! To give every small company the right to try and make it in business, the internet should not be run by a cartel!