GEICO vs Google Ads: Google Wins

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."

Comments

Better Stick

[fembots]

The ruling is fine, as long as other judges/courts are sticking to the same ruling in the future.

Moreoever it's quite widely recognized that companies are allowed to use/refer/compare other competitors under the terms of fair use, how else are companies going to mention competitors' products without infringing a TM?

The judge said that "as a matter of law it is not trademark infringement to use trademarks as keywords to trigger advertising".

Does that mean that it's okay to use "BesidesGoogle.com" or "BetterThanGoogle.com" for another online search engine service? Since it's only promoting fair competition as argued by Google. And domain name is simply a form of advertising keywords that people use to find a product.