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Appeals Court Rules Against Google On Keyword Ads
Eric Goldman writes "The Second Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against Google in Rescuecom v. Google (PDF), a trademark infringement lawsuit over Google's keyword advertising practices. The court said: 'The Complaint's allegations that Google's recommendation and sale of Rescuecom's mark to Google's advertisers, so as to trigger the appearance of their advertisements and links in a manner likely to cause consumer confusion when a Google user launches a search of Rescuecom's trademark, properly alleges a claim under the Lanham Act.' While this result hampers Google's ability to end trademark lawsuits early, the case is still at an early stage and Google could still win."
Google is my God!
Some days I get the sinking feeling Orwell was an optimist.
The ruling holds little besides the fact that Google did engage in a "use in commerce" of the trademarks. The Court followed the not hugely surprising line of reasoning that: 1) AdSense is clearly a commercial endeavor; and 2) AdSense clearly uses the trademarks, e.g. in its keyword suggestion tool. Therefore Google's claim, that the case should be dismissed immediately for failing to even fall within the scope of trademark law, was rejected.
Of course, Google's uses may still be perfectly legal. All the court's held is that Google does, as a factual matter, use the trademarks, and does so commercially. The case going forward will decide whether that use was within the scope permitted by trademark law.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Trademarks *are* special entities under the law. Doesn't it dilute a trademark when your competitor or unrelated or derogatory things come u from a search? Ultimately google will prevail for the same reason advertisers can use names for comparisons in their advertisements, it's a free speech issue which will trump commerce law.
I use Google Adwords for targeted marketing campaigns. Try using any well-known trademark in a new campaign; as of a month ago, they started getting much more aggressive about filtering these out. You can't save an ad unit if it contains trademarked phrases. I don't have any problem with this, aside from cases where you're using the trademark with permission. At some point I'm probably going to wind up emailing the Adwords team about cases like this, offering written verification of license to use such terms.
512 MB RAM, 20 GB disk, 200 GB transfer, five datacenters. $19.95/month.
Google ignores copyright, Google ignores trademarks, Google ignores human rights.
What doesn't Google ignore? your private data
mod me down, but you know I am right
"do no evil" is a nice platitude to trot out, but if the NSA promised to "do no evil" and AT&T promised to "do no evil", you'd be OK with them mining all of your info and trampling copyright at every turn?
I'm a consultant. People hire me to ask me questions about areas I am an expert in.
A few months ago, someone called me to ask about a product made by an obscure printer manufacturer, Mutoh. They had problems with some of their hardware and support. They asked me "What else is out there that you recommend?" Since I have expertise in this area, I told them I had some options for them. They hired me, and I offered them good advice.
I was a middle man between Customer A and a competitor to Mutoh (in their case, Mimaki). Should I be sued for Trademark infringement?
Google is a middle man between customers looking for information, and people offering answers to those questions. Mimaki has not paid me to dole out information, but in the case of a relatively free market, many "consultants" are actually commissioned by manufacturers to push their products. This isn't uncommon. If someone goes to an electronics store asking about an HP printer, the salesman MIGHT turn and offer an Epson because of a SPIF or other incentive to sell Epson over HP. It's the customer's responsibility to ask "Are you getting anything additional if I buy an Epson over an HP?"
Google isn't selling anyone's trademarked name, they're allowing two third parties to meet over what party A is looking for and party C might have information over to offer party A in their decision-making process.
If anything, this may actually HELP companies who have competitors buying their trademarked names as keyboards on Google AdWords. It offers reputation to the original company, and they can stake out a claim by promoting it.
Anyone who is afraid of their competition is only afraid because their competition is doing something better, cheaper or faster. Trying to shut down Google AdWords for letting 2 third parties interact over a keyword is going to make your market SMALLER, not bigger.
What a bunch of morons.
Look at the monitor. That's your actual desktop.
I don't have a monitor, I have an LCD panel you insensitive clod! Although I am running Ubuntu on this laptop...
512 MB RAM, 20 GB disk, 200 GB transfer, five datacenters. $19.95/month.
From the PDF:
"Rescuecom alleges, however, that a user might easily be misled to believe that
the advertisements which appear on the screen are in fact part of the relevance-based search
result and that the appearance of a competitor's ad and link in response to a searcher's search for Rescuecom is likely to cause trademark confusion as to affiliation, origin, sponsorship, or approval of service."
When I did a search for 'Rescuecom' my adsense suggestion was 'iyogi.ca' with the caption 'Get computer service better than rescuecom'.
However, Google is providing data on a subset of keywords based on your inquiry - Just like meta-tags in webpages. Anyone can choose their meta's and adopt their page to be listed higher in the ranks. Adsense is just the paid ('Sponsored links') portion of the page.
There is no bias.
And Rescuecom apparently has a low perception of its clientbase.
When I go to the supermarket here in France and buy Nestle baby food for my little boy, the supermarket system prints and hands me 1 discount tickets for "Bledina baby food" for each Nestle product I bought.
echo '[q]sa[ln0=aln80~Psnlbx]16isb572CCB9AE9DB03273snlbxq' |dc
I know you're joking, but for what it's worth, "monitor" is a generic term that applies to anything that lets you monitor information: displays, and even speakers.
Yes, I was joking.
512 MB RAM, 20 GB disk, 200 GB transfer, five datacenters. $19.95/month.
Google is my God!
Wow... the moderators have no sense of humor!
Some days I get the sinking feeling Orwell was an optimist.