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GEICO vs Google Ads: Google Wins

Posted by timothy on from the usaa-rules-anyhow dept.

abertoll writes "A federal judge decided that Google is able to sell ads under the GEICO trademark, claiming that this is fair use of the trademark. GEICO's contention was that competing insurance companies were using the name GEICO under which to buy Google Ads, so that when someone searches for GEICO, their ad would come up."

2 of 205 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Better Stick by harvardian · · Score: 5, Informative
    I went to a panel discussion on this topic, and one of the lawyers on the panel mentioned that Google has already incurred fines in France and Germany for this practice.

    For example: this story

    As a result of the ruling, searches under 'bourse de vols' will only generate search results linking to Mr Dariot's site. Google is looking to appeal the decision.
    So as happy as we are about this ruling in the States, it looks like France isn't so keen on letting companies bid on their competitors' trademarks.

    I don't know how this influences broad-match type scenarios, though. What happens if somebody searches for "(trademark term) cars", and a competitor buys "cars" rather than the trademarked term? This seems like it would be prohibitively difficult to stop.
  2. Geico routinely sues by cat_jesus · · Score: 5, Informative

    Geico sends C&D's and sues people all the time over weird shit like this. Upper management seems to be pretty clueless about the internet. If you have a domain name with Geico in it, you will be contacted eventually and threatened.

    It's funny though because they took the domain http://geicosucks.com from someone and decided to point that domain name to the same ip address as geico.com. So you can get a quote and everything from geicosucks.com. They could have done a simple redirect but their internet "expert" claims that they would have to get another $10K web server in order to do a redirect from geicosucks.com to geico.com

    Of course the PHBs won't listen to anyone but the buttmunch who insists that they'd need a new server for a redirect. Funny how the useless and clueless IT people end up in managment.