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Google's AdWords under scrutiny
Posted by Steven Wu on Saturday, January 31 @ 15:24:41 EST
Contributed by Anonymous
Trademark
Anonymous writes "American Blind & Wallpaper Factory Inc. filed a trademark lawsuit against Google in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York Tuesday.

Codefendants in the lawsuit include Netscape Communications Corp. and Ask Jeeves Inc., sites that use Google's search engine. American Blind alleges that the search engine's keyword-based advertising violates its trademarks.

This is at least the seventh (!) lawsuit pending against Google in France, Germany and the USA over its revenue model. For a quick overview over the lawsuits check out this site. Especially interesting, Google already won a lawsuit in Germany, but was not so lucky in France. If more courts decide against Google, this could set off a rush of trademark complaints against search-engine companies and cut their revenue stream."

 
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Re: Google's AdWords under scrutiny (Score: 1)
by JimCYL on Monday, February 02 @ 13:49:39 EST
(User Info | Send a Message) http://synicism-online.blogspot.com
I don't see why these cases shouldn't be governed by the same logic that led courts to decided that the use of trademarked terms in metatags was not infringing. It's not like the adwords are leading to customer confusion. A search for "american blind wallpaper factory" still brings up the trademark owner's website in the top search position. The fact that competitiors show up in the ads on the side of the screen should be irrelevant.


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