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AXA sues Google over AdWords
Da Fokka writes "Insurance company AXA is suing Google in a french court because a search for 'AXA' results in links to their competitors. A similar claim was initially awarded but successfully appealed by Google. If this claim is successful, this could be quite a setback for Google's business model."
Why can't they just sue the company who's purchasing the ad, instead of suing Google?
If search engines become responsible for the accuracy of their searches, then that's going to become risky business, especially when everyone's always just a little lower in the rankings than they'd like to be.
Worse for Google is that an insurance company is going to have lots of money and can easily afford to mount a very strong case against them. Hopefully, Google will have some luck, but it sounds like the similar case won't stand to help them much.
-N
I've nothing to say here...
I'm trying to figure out how a court can actually hold Google RESPONSIBLE for advertisement for a business entity.
Google's primary purpose is INFORMATION, not the aforementioned advertisement.
If I'm looking for something to purchase, I'm generally more concerned with price & availability than who I buy FROM. It's in this area that Google shines, offering a plethora of various places to buy/rent from.
I would think this is an excellent opportunity for Google to make the distinction between their ACTUAL business plan and their PERCIEVED business plan.
Think about it, just because you've coined some obscure acronym for yourself or your business, does that mean it's Google's responsibility to insure that people find you during their search? Wow, nice way to shrink that ad budget.
Don't park drunk, accidents cause people.
The biggest problem I see with international law is the conflict between established systems. Political animosity between two nations involved can only make it worse.
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Thats what I'd do.
A quick search for 'Linux' brings up the following #1 sponsored link:
Linux News
Why is Windows cheaper than Linux?
Get all the facts Now!
www.microsoft.ca/getthefacts
So can Linus sue now? Seriously, I hope the courts don't rule against Google. It's not like the nasty ads that were being placed over other ads on company websites, it's just a sponsored link.
Isn't it perfectly legal to say that you don't want to do business with someone because of moral/other objections?
What happens if google just removed any and all references to AXA on the web?
They could damage any global corp, and destroy any web business that wasn't already a name (amazon).
This is their scary power, scary power indeed.
In the forced localized version of Google here in Australia, all I see is a) AXA official web sites b) An ad for a local mortgage firm. No compeditors. Obviously the validility of this lawsuit varies from country to country.
In the interests of full disclosure: I am an AXA Australia shareholder.
...and on the sponsored ads, every one of them had 'AXA' in the title, but didn't seem to be related to the company itself. Are sponsored links different from regular links in that the companies give Google the title that'll show up? It seems like the only way to actually solve this may be to force Google to check for trademarks in titles, but that is a LOT of work, and probably is only feasible if a company assertively places its name in "the list."
Since the story you link mentions both terms though, "AXA" as well as "Direct Assurance" - I think it's still a decent chance they'll loose on the basis of AXA not being a word (except in the Ebonics sense as pointed out below).
Kinetic stupidity has a new brand leader: Allen Zadr.
I have no idea what French or EU law might add to this issue, but from the way trademark law generally works -- what is illegal about allowing people to type a trademark into a field and showing them ads based on that? I don't see how there's any infringement. Trademarks aren't magic words that must not be uttered without permission.
However, there is no doubt that AXA isn't found in most dictionaries, certainly not English or French...
It's probably in the Scrabble dictionary, though, which is why I hate Scrabble.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
I think this was pretty standard practice at one point, to put your competitors names as triggers for your Adword advert. A competitor tried to do that to us, which we thought was a bit scummy but we didn't have the resources to do anything about it. Someone pointed us at Google's compaints procedure: we wrote to them, and after a long delay the offending advert was taken down. I found another article which implies that they will be reversing this policy and allowing you to bid on anybody's name and trademark, and take down adverts only where a particular jurisdiction makes it awkward for them (i.e. outside of US and Canada). This sucks of course but TBH I'm not sure said competitor would have got many hits from our name at the time. Now I suspect they might but this time we'd be able to do something about it :-)
Matthew @ Bytemark Hosting
Here in part of the United States, there is a store called Meijer. Its kind of a huge Wal-Mart with a food section for those that arent familiar. At any rate, when you check out, your cash register reciept is always accompanied by a coupon "strip" with coupons for a good number of the competitors of the items you JUST bought. For instance, if I go to Meijer and buy Armor hot dogs, im likely to get a coupon when checking out for Oscar Mayer hot dogs. Buy Heinz mustard and youre likely to get a coupon for French's when you check out. Its like that for everything from toothpaste to baked beans. These competitors buy these ads from Meijer as I understand it with specific instructions as to when customer buy product A, give them my coupon. In 10 years of shopping there, ive never gotten a coupon for a product I just bought, its always a competitor. Its not only the Googles and Yellow Pages of the world doing things like this.
Why would they lose? I just don't get why AXA or any other company would think that a search on any search enginge should throw up their company or under what law it would be expected that it would and that the search engine would be libable if it did not. Please explain
Cypherpunks: Civil Liberty Through Complex Mathematics. Those who live by the sword die by the arrow.
What is happening here is that a competitor is "buying" an advert imprint on Google when the word "axa" is in the search criteria. Its pretty much the same thing as a billboard saying "Get your Coca Cola here" with an arrow down to a Pepsi fridge, or a table with your home-made lemonade.
This is, in fact, exactly what trademark laws are meant to prevent: the abuse of your good name by competitors, detractors and freeloaders.
Trademarks are, in fact, magic words (or phrases) that can't be used in many ways without permission. You can talk about Pepsi, refer to Pepsi, satirize Pepsi, but you can't use the name Pepsi to advertise your business or product, or claim to be Pepsi-compliant or Pepsi-approved, or basically abuse the (presumably) good reputation of Pepsi to bring gain to yourself or harm to the trademark holder.
What is being described here is a despicable business practice, and does not deserve the hand of support its getting from Slashdot. Trademarks and branding are important tools for product differentiation in mature markets, which is why they are strongly protected in capatalist economies.
That said, the guilty parties here are those that register trademarks (to which they have no right) as AdWords; not Google. This court action is comparable to holding a newspaper responsible because an advertiser illegally used a trademark, or holding a supermarket responsible for the illegal use of a trademark on its community advertising board.
The correct solution is to apply existing laws to a "new" domain. Google should, on request from someone who can offer prima facae proof that they are the legal trademark holder, supply the full contact details of all parties who have either currently or previously registered AdWords for that trademark. The trademark holder can then go after the infringer(s) directly. It should not be possible to request or get an injunction to force Google to remove the AdWord, for the legal reasons given below.
Unfortunately many countries are applying their only flavours of national and international law to the problem. This becomes particularly complicated in the case of trademarks, which typically are national in extent (although many countries have specific policies for "global" or "well known" international brands), and are also limited to a single domain.
Thus a single country could have two registered trademarks "XYZ", one for a soft drink and another for a range of security doors. Another country could also have a trademark "XYZ" for a soft drink, that is in no way related to the "XYZ" of the first country. This happens frequently, and must be absolute hell for companies like Google.
i-name =twylite [http://public.xdi.org/=twylite], see idcommons.net
It is simply amazing how 'nitpicky' people can really get. Sueing Google over a search result. They should be happy that they are at least first on the list. If you search on msn.com, they are 13th, with their competitors listed first. Of course Yahoo and Lycos list them like google does, first on the list, while Excite has them at #6.
Are the folks at Axa planning on filing suit against these other search engines as well? I think google gave them an excellent spot at the top of their search food chain for the criteria.
I certainly hope the folks at Google read this and use the other search engine results in their defense.
Regards,
Jeff Kirkland
Google posts paid advertising links (on the sides and above normal search results) always using a different background color, and specifically noting that those results are "sponsored links".
The fact that Google specifically separates sponsored links from it's normal search results is one of the reasons why Google has as high a popularity as it does.
About this lawsuit The AXA company is suing Google for selling both the trademarked term, "Direct Assurance" and the companies non-dictionary name, "AXA".
Google sold the non-dictionary term AXA to competitors of AXA. This has nothing to do with standard search results, and everything to do with advertising. If AXA were a dictionary word in English or French then there's a decent chance that Google would win the case (like the last case).
While I personally feel there is no validity to a lawsuit over selling a trademarked term made of 'dictionary' words, I see potential for liability where you are selling terms that are not otherwise found in the dictionary.
Kinetic stupidity has a new brand leader: Allen Zadr.
Never mind the fact that they're getting bucketloads of free publicity, a la SCO-stylee, through the lawsuit. Being an insurance company, you'd think they'd be a bit more cautious. Boo-hoo-hoo, AXA...
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What is happening here is that a competitor is "buying" an advert imprint on Google when the word "axa" is in the search criteria. Its pretty much the same thing as a billboard saying "Get your Coca Cola here" with an arrow down to a Pepsi fridge, or a table with your home-made lemonade.
I don't see it like that at all. I think it is much more like when you go looking for advil in ANY store, and there is Advil(the search results) and right next to it is the store brand saying Switch and Save!!! under it(The ad words results). Are you saying that stores should not place competing products next to each other on their shelves? I see this as the same thing.
It's clear that the adwords ads aren't search results. The only way it would be trademark infringement is if the competitor in the ad that appeared actually claimed to be advil. IF they say Bayre Asprin - better than other pain killers, or whatever they put in the ad, that isn't trademark infringement.
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Ironically, Google may be in trouble because their search engine is too good. In another search engine, if you search for "AXA" you expect to get a bunch of useless sites. When you search in Google, you expect to get useful information. Therefore if someone does a search for AXA in Google, they fully expect that their results are related to AXA. If Google searches were bad, then there would be no confusion because users would expect to get irrelevant results, and there wouldn't be much of a case.
-- Pot is safer than Beer
Search engine is like an automated yellow page book but lot bigger. This would be like pepsi taking an advertisement out on the listing of coke in yellowpages. Its not a trademark violation. When someone asks you were a mcdonalds is, and you say there's burger king down the street, are you committing a trademark violation?
Have you ever been to a turkish prison?
Trademarks and branding are important tools for product differentiation in mature markets, which is why they are strongly protected in capatalist economies.
While what you have said about trademarks is true, what has all of that got to do with Google? Google is a search engine, it is a privately published directory that is publicly accessible. At the end of the day, it is just like a magazine.
For example, pick up a PC magazine and you'll find that there are instances where there are articles published about product X and right on the next page is a full page advert for product X's competitor. Just like how you might find an Epson advert right after an article on HP printers.
Yet i don't see companies suing over the very standard practice of placing ad's based on a publications editorial calender.
Clearly it's the same thing no? You may argue that in this case users specifically searched for AXA and got to see their competitors also, but isn't the case the same when someone purposely flips the page to look at an article about HP printers and sees an Epson Ad beside it?
Whats happening here is not somebody telling you to get Coca-Cola out of a Pepsi ice box, but rather more like Pepsi paying for a billboard right next to every Coca-Cola billboard. Ironic? Maybe, but definitely not wrong.
Sometimes I wish I was a plumber, then I'd know how to deal with other people's shit.
"Direct" and "Assurance" can both be found in a dictionary, and therefore should both be available to anybody who wants to pay a search engine for them (I'm not disagreeing with you here)
pretty soon we won't be able to use any words or combinations of letters at all, because they're trademarked... schools will have to stop making us write research papers because we'll be comparing competing companies...
oh no! we'll actually have to compete with somebody... but I wanted my monopoly :cry:
"Direct" and "Assurance" can both be found in a dictionary, and therefore should both be available to anybody who wants to pay a search engine for them (I'm not disagreeing with you here)
:cry
That is a ridiculous comment. You might as well say the letters A and X are taught in many primary schools therefore they should be available to anyone who wants to pay a search engine for them.
oh no! we'll actually have to compete with somebody... but I wanted my monopoly
Yes, see how worked up the Slashbots get about trivial issues, but it's a different question when another organization does it.