Many marketers went apeshit last year when Google decided to allow Adwords advertisers to use others' trademarks as keywords in their ad buys. This action triggered a whole shitstorm of lawsuits. As noted below, a California court has thrown out parts of the suit...... BUT.... Google's lawyers shouldn't start sucking each other's dicks just yet. A part of the case still remains alive.
From:
http://www.mediapost.com/publication...699&nid=111870
Quote:
A federal judge in California has dismissed portions of a lawsuit by California entrepreneur Daniel Jurin against Google over the company's AdWords program. But the decision isn't a complete victory for Google because it keeps alive a key part of the lawsuit.
Jurin, who sells StyroTrim building material, brought suit last year for trademark infringement, false advertising, interference with contractual relations, and other counts. The allegations all stemmed from Google's AdWords program, which allows trademarked terms to trigger pay-per-click ads.
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It is very common for courts to throw out parts of the complaint since plaintiffs' lawyers pile on all possible legal claims under most courts' pleading rules which in effect says "use it or lose it". The court then throws out claims based on motions filed by the defense.
Quote:
England has not yet dismissed the trademark infringement claims, but those, too, seem likely to fail, says Santa Clara University law professor Eric Goldman. "The writing is on the wall for this lawsuit," Goldman says in a blog post about the case.
Google is currently facing 10 trademark infringement cases stemming from AdWords. No court has yet definitively ruled on whether using a brand name to trigger a search ads infringes trademark. The one case to go to trial, a lawsuit by insurance company Geico against Google, resulted in a victory for Google in 2004. In that case, a judge in Alexandria, Va. ruled that Geico had not proven that consumers were confused when they typed "Geico" into a search box and were served with ads for other insurance companies.
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While this particular case might be weak, there's others in the pipeline....