Slashdot Mirror
Lawsuit Says Google's Sale of Keywords Is Illegal
Hugh Pickens writes "Google encourages advertisers to purchase other companies' trademarks as targeted search terms, and they're expanding the practice into 190 countries. When Audrey Spangenberg typed the name of her small software company into Google and saw the ads of competitors that had paid Google to display their marketing messages whenever someone searched for FirePond, a registered trademark, she was furious. This week, her company filed a class-action suit against Google in federal court, saying that Google had infringed on her company's trademark, and challenged Google's policies on behalf of all trademark owners in the state. Legal experts said it was the first class-action suit against Google over the issue. Google's acceptance of such competitive uses of trademarks has irked many other companies, including the likes of American Airlines and Geico, who have filed suits against Google and settled them. Many brand owners say the practice abuses their brands, confuses customers and increases their cost of doing business. 'I know of several companies spending millions of dollars a year in payments to Google to make sure that their company is the very first sponsored link' on searches for their own names, said Terrence Ross, a partner at Gibson Dunn, who represented American Airlines in its suit against Google. 'It certainly smacks of a protection racket,'"
Selling a T-Shirt with McDonalds name on it and selling advertising with McDonalds name on it.
When they are both done without permission is there a difference?
There have already been plenty of cases that addressed this very issue, with a lot of them coming out on the side of the search engine that's providing the ads.
I'm not entirely sure how you're going to prove trademark infringement. Courts have argued whether Google's use is even commercial, much less if the use has a significant likelihood of confusion (mainly because Google's act of only putting these ads in a sponsored link is usually sufficient for the ordinary user to know that the trademark owner isn't sponsoring these advertisements of competitors.
What about dilution? I see a hard time because the majority of the trademark use is behind the scenes unknown to the user. Unless by typing in one trademark and getting another via sponsored links that's considered dilution by blurring, which I suppose is a possibility.
Just some random thoughts aloud, but I don't think this suit is going pass through. If it does, we might get some interesting new direct case law on the subject though.
Do no evil....
Honestly, search using google is.... well teh older a search engine gets the more difficult it is to get the information you seek and quite frankly, the more advertising you have to wade through to get it....if you can find it what you are looking for amoung the advertising...
Maybe we need a sub search engine....
Here's the google search for Geico. You will notice it's clean and clear of any advertisments. Likewise with a google search for AA, contrast it to a American airlines, which has an ad. These are on Google's banned ad keywords, such as guns, Jews, ammunition, and other content that Google's morals would rather not see people make money on.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
what if i wanted to buy my wacky inflatable arm flailing tubeman from Al Harrington but when i searched google for this product all i got were competitors products, so i would be sorely disappointed in google's help in finding the product of my choice, not only google us disappointing the marketers of products they are also a disappointment to the customers of said products, i think google is seriously fucking up with this practice...
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
the correct quote from the article is "...smells of a protection racket" - Which still doesn't make a whole lot of sense
Google, once again, is just using the basic idea of competition to drive a market. There is nothing to see here but some whiney person who is shocked to discovered the world does not revolve around them.
So basically, -1 troll/offtopic is really slashdots way of saying "I hate that you thought of something before me."
Call me stupid, but I'd never piss off the biggest advertisement company on the net.
What do they think it will happen if they win?
Love many, trust a few, do harm to none.
"When Audrey Spangenberg typed the name of her small software company into Google and saw the ads of competitors .. she was furious"
I just typed it in and got no sponsored links. imnal but I do think your competitors hijacking your own trademarked name should be banned.
-
imnal == I Am Not a Lawyer
IANAL, but from what I've read, and what I've heard lawyers quote, one of the main factors in judging trademark infringement is the potential of confusion in the mind of the consumer (citation).
So if company A can show that the intent of a competitor (company B) buying keyword ad space specifically with company A's trademark in it and their intent is to confuse consumers into thinking company B is company A, then they have a case.
That said, there may be more to this due to the actual practice I've seen in big companies going after people over trademark infringement (Mike Rowe Soft anyone?). But these cases are often settled out of court so they could just be scare tactics since the big company knows they couldn't win in court other than to out lawyer the defendant.
Faith is a willingness to accept something w/o complete proof and to act on it. Reason allows you to correct that faith.
This is equivalent to putting "recommended books" near other similar, popular books in a book store. Only, companies pay you to have you move your book towards the prime areas. No trademarks were infringed, nothing was misleading, its the digital equivalent to rearranging stock in a store.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
What do they think it will happen if they win?
..
FirePond will get back control of their own trademarked name
The purpose of a trademark is to identify a product uniquely; this is done in order to help buyers, not to help companies.
As long as customer is not misled about what he is buying, the use of the trademark is OK. So, if someone responds to a search for "FirePond" with an ad for "SmokeLake", that's not a problem. They can even talk about "FirePond" and why "SmokeLake" is so much better.
It would cross the line if SmokeLake made a web site that looked like it belonged to FirePond and customers might actually be misled into buying SmokeLake when they intend to buy FirePond.
"This is equivalent to putting "recommended books" near other similar, popular books in a book store"
:)
This is like going into the store and asking to see a range of Nintendo games consoles and the staffer slipping in a PlayStation on top, cause the company slipped him some notes
http://www.bizjournals.com/twincities/stories/2009/02/16/daily23.html 4th or 5th result when I searched for 'FirePond'
It's ridiculous how far the worship of Google goes here on /.
We are talking about a huge company that's getting extra money to perform its search engine service poorly (if I'm searching for 'Pepsi', I want 'Pepsi' results, not 'Coca-cola'. I don't mind if you give me additional results about 'Coca-cola' because it's relevant, related or similar, but DO NOT replace my expected 'Pepsi' results just because The Coca Cola Company is giving you money, this is absurd).
1. FirePond, Inc. ...
FPX offers the only true multi-tenant configure, price, quote solution featuring our robust product configurator software and unqiue proposal generation
So, what do they sell??
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Trademark law is all about protecting consumers from being deceived about the source of goods/services.
In theory, yes, but in practice (as you probably know, since you know what initial interest confusion is), that's not the reality. IIRC, consumers don't even have standing to sue in a case of trademark infringement. Maybe they can sue for false advertising, but it's the trademark owner who has to bring the lawsuit for infringement.
Besides, with the expansion of trademark due to the notion of "dilution", and the licensing of trademarks for purposes other than source-identification (sponsorship, etc. - the stadium doesn't come from M&T Bank), it's hard to argue that trademark is all about protecting consumers, or even mostly about it anymore.
In 1-800 Contacts v. WhenU, WhenU didn't run into trouble because their ads popped up in a separate window. That's not the case with Google (though they do clearly say "Sponsored Link"). WhenU was also not found to be "using" the trademark (despite including it in a database), because "use" of a trademark for the purpose of infringement has to be in commerce, and simply using the mark in a database didn't count as such.
"Anyone who [rips a CD] is probably engaging in copyright infringement." - David O. Carson
I think a real problem is that many names for trademarks and businesses will be duplicated through sheer probability, I really doubt this case has any legs at all against google. Google gahters the enormous amounts of data from all over the world, it would be like trying to sue someone because they have the same name as you or your business and they are located in another country. It doesn't make any kind of sense.
Personally I think a lot of old laws simply have to be obsoleted or updated to deal with the fact society has changed.
What's Google supposed to do if I search for comparisons?
If, for instance, I search for "FirePond Sterling Commerce" (Sterling Commerce is a FirePond competitor), should Google display neither company's ads? Both?
Idon't really see how this is any worse then generics that say "compare active ingredients to " and similar messages on storebrand food items. Sometimes they sit right next to the brandname as well, the horror!
Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.
I think this issue is one of the problems with old laws governing new technologies.
It would seem that being able to generate money from someone else's trademark, copyright, etc.. would be an abuse without the owner's consent, however, trying to run a search engine without them would kill a critical function of the Internet. Web searches
Now the choice is.. do we allow it for functionality or do we deny it on principle, or, as is really happening, just deny the use when you bring in enough lawyers.
I read all these analogies on what it is that Google did and here is my take:
For the purpose of this analogy imagine Google owns a telephone directory where your number gets listed for free for your business, but there is also a "Yellow Pages" section, where you can pay to have your business listed with number and some info - now imagine you only have your number listed in the free section, and a competitor of yours bought an add, put YOUR company name in it with THEIR number.
Google adwords is so powerful that it is in essence putting another IP address behind your company/domain name.
And in fact: Google "did" nothing - they offer a product that some competitor of this company has found a way to abuse.
That they allow such practices bears study though - I am unsure if the laws of the world has caught up with this business model though.
I would suggest that they notify the owner of the trademark name that someone is interested in buying an adword for that name, and to decide not to allow it, or maybe even get some of the addwords cash - it is their trademark after all. They could in essence cause the addword to be too expensive for the competitor to buy...
This is in fact similar to someone selling your personal details, google is selling other trademarks... hmm...
Seven Days with Ubuntu Unity
I agree with the company. I think nobody should be allowed to mention Fire**** products anywhere (not even product websites, since other products are also listed there), nor should Google be allowed to index that term. That way the only mention of that product will be on the company's website, and we can let them wither into obscurity.
A big reason that America is in the shape we are, is because far too many idiots sue. And they sue, because some GD lawyer tells them that other party will settle. I went through a 4 year divorce because my ex was told that it would cost me 100K (on top of the money that I had already given her on a 1 year marriage) and that I would settle rather than fight it. It cost 60K+ (less than the 100K), but still, this was caused because the other lawyer pushed this crap.
Google, if you settle, it will keep coming at you and everybody else. The company owns the trademark. BUT, ALL OF US have the RIGHT to put up ads against it based on seeing the ad. DO NOT SETTLE.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
> The primary focus is *not* protecting the trademark owner.
> Trademark law is all about protecting consumers from being deceived about the source of goods/services.
That is accomplished in part by protecting the integrity of the trademark. Google is allowing company A to advertise via explicit use of company B's trademark, which is illegal. There are only a few instances in advertising where using another company's trademark is allowed, and this isn't one of them. Using another company's trademark is so fraught with danger that most companies avoid it even when it is legal to do so. That's why commercials doing comparative advertising say things like, "the leading national brand" rather than naming the brand. They do so not because they're afraid of giving the competition free advertising (the leading national brand is already well known), but because they're afraid of getting sued for trademark infringement.
This is something for which Google deserves to get slapped hard.
and Firepond would slap them with an Anti-Trust complaint, and they'd win.
Perhaps.
It the trademarked company that is the subject of the search is buried on page 2069 of the results, ranked behind fire ants and fire pants, then there would certainly be a case. I suspect there is still a case if they adverts are clearly competitors and the subject of search company is not top ranked in the results.
I'd be posting from my account but.../. managed to forget my password. Maybe the /. crew is the same crew that couldn't get SPRINT's web site back up for two days. It was down. Just came up. Not newsworthy on /. Just like the big bug that cisco doesn't reveal until a customer gets bitten in the ass...hmmm 2+2 = sprint sues cisco for billions... you read it here first.
Someone comes up to you on the street and asks you where the nearest McDonald's is and you reply "There is a Wendy's around the corner". Have you committed trademark infringement? The only difference between this and Google is that Google makes money from doing this which might be an important difference.
I don't see how this would be fundamentally different from the local megastore putting their brand painkiller right next to Tylenol with a big 'Compare to Tylenol' on the front of the box.
You are only partially getting it. Google is selling the keyword FirePond to a competitor and then showing a competitor's ad. If Google maintained its own database of companies and their competitors, it would not be an issue.
Google is selling a trademarked word that they do not own to a business that does not own the trademark either. While I think the lawsuit is BS, most of you prattling along about it fail to realize they have a good shot of winning this one as it IS questionable on Google.
"The sponsored links, as everyone knows, are displayed in a separate section from the "organic" links"
Slashdotters may know, but a LOT of people do not recognise the difference, especially when the sponsored links are above the listing rather than to the right...
Why is there such a fuss about this? Apparently there would not be an issue if the names and trademarks in question were not already owned by other parties. the injured parties are suffering the stealing of their images and names for the profit and "fun" of persons who have not at least requested permission from the true owners, for their usage- who of you would not mind their trademarked names or images used for purposes other than the recognizability and profit of their brand and companies? seems kinda dumb to have an argument that says google is within their right to sell the usage of trademarks that were created paid for and owned by the companies they represent. Google does not own the names and trademarks of other companies they sell and should not allow anyone other than the rightful owners to use them- you know copyright and trademark infringement? DUH! The analogies are stupid! Do I have the right to used Sprint's trademark to further my business or to profit? How is it that so many are allowing the boundaries of ownership versus theft to become blurred? Simply put again, google does not own the properties they sell under the representation of advertising, and they should require that interested parties own the information publicized on their servers. I see a crippling or regulation of the keyword business coming. One good thing out of this argument may the that copyright laws are once again the debate to be resolved.
Google is a privately owned website, they can put whatever they want on it. Peple have confused Google with being the be-all and end-all of the internet. if you don't like a website don't use it. start your own search engine with your own shitty company at the top of every search. the idea of the ownership of words is contary to the freedom of speech>
So we're considering slapping Google's hand for just being capitalistic? If Google loses, why not just get rid of capitalism altogether? Think about it- it is Google's *own* freakin' site. It is not anyone else's. They pay for it to be hosted. We use it for free. So- go ahead and wrap a chain around Google's angles. The current anti-capitalist climate is just horrid.
The companies buying the Google keywords are explicitly using competitors' trademarks to further their own business. They are the ones that should be sued, and rightfully so in my opinion.
If you buy Pampers at a grocery store, you'll see an ad, and probably a coupon, for Huggies on the back of your cash register receipt. This is not merely an analogy; it precisely the same thing using paper instead of web pages.
since the competitor land will have the competitor's trademarked name somewhere on the site, else you wouldn't know it belonged to the competitor, would you.
Just another way that lawyers can put money in their pocket at the expense of someone else.
That is the ONLY function the civil court system performs well.
There is really no point to work to earn money. Some lawyer to just make up some reason to take it from you.
It is a completely corrupt system that exists only to enrich members of the bar. More people have to understand that it is nothing like on TV. Every lawyer I have met is selfish, small minded and greedy.
GEICO vs Google Ads: Google Wins Wouldn't a judge just throw this out once he got wind of the GEICO case? If not, what is different about this case?
They don't serve english speakers?
Spagenberg is a notorious patent troll. The company Firepond recently went through a slew of litigation asserting sketchy "advertising" patents against the entire world. Looks like they are not trying to make some money on class action lawsuits. I can't speak to the merits--I'm a patent attorney, not a TM attorney--but knowing the history of Spagenberg entities is interesting.
http://www.patentlyo.com/patent/2008/02/court-refuses-t.html
I've read through all these posts with fanciful and far fetched analogies. Most of them aren't terribly close to the issue at hand. (Billboard placement, really?) As near as I can tell, it's more like this:
There are 5 pages of widget makers listed in the yellow pages. I make widgets too, and I want to--in addition to the free listing in the directory--take out advertisements as well. So I buy four 1" by 3" ad slots, and for an extra fee I can chose where they appear. I place one of them on the same page my listing is on, and then I place the other three on the pages where my three largest competitors appear in the directory.
In case it's not clear to anyone - Google is the phone book in this. No one has asserted that the advertisers (buyers of AdSense keywords) are paying to have search results altered. The assertion is that they are paying to have their *advertisement* appear alongside a competitor's *directory listing*.
I don't really see how the complainant has much of a leg to stand on. The "sponsored links" are separated out from the search results, put inside a separate block and labeled as such. It would be pretty hard to claim that they were misdirecting consumers, or even allowing their clients to misdirect consumers.
And I'm not even sure it's wrong! (Although a particularly cogent argument may sway my opinion). A search term for a competitor or a competing product sure as hell is a good indicator that someone might be interested in what I have to sell as well. It doesn't mean that I'm somehow taking over their trademark. Ultimately I think Google should (and probably will) prevail in this.
Some possible weaknesses in my position:
1) Does Google sell exclusive use of the word? Can more than one party buy the same adsense word? If they sell the word to one and only one party - then there may be some fault in that they are denying the legitimate trademark owner the ability to advertise with his own trademark.
2) This is - ultimately - a relatively new area for law to cover. What exactly is Google selling? If the court finds that Google's product here is essentially the creation of an association in the public perception, then I can see that beginning to legitimately tread on a traditional trademark.
3) Brand dilution. Advertising my competing product with an association to a more popular competitor's product runs the risk of turning the keyword from a trademark into a generic term. If the public perception of the keyword is thereby expanded to include the class of products, then it does in fact harm the trademark. However - I'm not sure Google would have liability in this case. I suspect it'd be the party that bought the keyword instead.
(Standard disclaimers apply - IANAL, opinions only my own, etc.)
This is a basic (and common) misunderstanding of trademark law. It is not illegal to make money off of someone else's trademark. You just cannot confuse buyers into thinking your item is a product of the trademark owner.
Now, in practical terms, of the two competing companies, the one with the larger legal budget will likely prevail in court. . . but that's another argument.
If a company making a TV advert should avoid mentioning another company's name to aovid getting sued, why doesn't the same principle apply to the company advertising on the internet using another company's name? If the TV network is not liable, why should Google be?
The way I see it is that it's little different to a supermarket having competing brands of say, coffee in the same aisle, or shelf.
If Dowe Egberts want - or even pay to be next to Percol the fact that they SAY to the supermarket 'put us next to the Percol coffee' doesn't infringe Percol's trademark, and the resulting proximity doesn't create any confusion.
The search results are an on-the-fly aisle created on the use of a keyword. The keywords are sold simply to REFERENCE the competitor's product so that the 'aisle' can be created.
I don't think it's so much about trademark law or confusion as brand owners whining that a search for their trademark produces a list of results that is not exclusively about them! Oh my! Someone wanting to buy our trademarked product might be reminded that another competing product exists and might buy that instead!
In other words they're trying to stifle competition.
Corporation, n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility. - Ambrose Bierce
I once searched for "Kindle" and got an AdWords link to the Sony e-Reader with the tagline "Rekindle your love of reading".
You know, if I'm looking for a competitor to Adobe (for example), I *want* to be able to see competitors' ads when I do a search for Adobe.
--Jim (me)
Don't be fooled here. These are the same people behind some of the most notorious patent troll companies around.
My concern would be the implications of Google not being able to sell ads for competitors for particular, trademarked names.
It's been shown to be fairly common to "brand" a particular type of product with a trademarked name. I want a DVR, but to me (well not me, but some people), they're all "TiVos." That's a pretty hefty branding problem for someone trying to make a competing product already; if they can't even advertise in the same space, or that their product is like a TiVo, but better...
Or an iPod(TM). Or a Rolodex(TM). Or a Coke(TM). (In certain parts of the country, meaning, any kind of soda. Don't ask me why.) Or, if you want to take this to the level of ridiculousness, a Linux vendor that also sells hardware couldn't advertise for "windows" (the transparent kind).
I am looking for a bookstore, I search Barnes and Noble, but it's helpful for me to know if there's a competing bookstore closer to me. (Assuming there are any competing bookstores left. Are there?) And so on, and so forth. Maybe trademark owners are pissed off about this, but as a consumer, I'm delighted.
I don't believe in time. It's a grand conspiracy designed to sell watches.
A while back I got a call from a Google salesman, wanting to sell me various keywords for about $300/month, so my website would pop up when those keywords were used.
So explain to me how this sales dude found my website in the first place, hmmmm??
======
I got a similar call from Linkfish last week. They wanted to sell me those same keywords for $1300 and up, "for life". Meanwhile I was busy looking up info on the company, which turns out to be a subsidiary of eperks (whose reputation is far less than sterling). When I went to the eperks site, I found it had been hacked and was displaying some blackhat's logo instead.
Funny thing, linkfish's traffic is not only something like 0.0003% of Google's, it's only about 10x larger than what my main site already attracts.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
In 2004 Geico v. Google Inc. was a suit very similar to this. Geico was unable to prove that where searchers google Geico, they specifically only wanted the Geico webpage, instead of looking for the best insurance deal. Because Geico was unable to establish this the case was ended early with a judgment in Google's favor.
I can't quite decide where I come down on this issue...I'll have to think it through, and of course my decision will be final and binding on all of you. In the mean time, consider this analogy.
There's a stretch of highway, a few hundred feet long. On the left end there's a store called Brass Cat Shoes(tm). Brass Cat Shoes has been there for quite a while, and is pretty well known, at least in Brass Cat Shoe circles. And they have the trademark. On the right end of the stretch of highway is another store named Dave's Cat Shoe. Dave's fuzzy fabric shoes don't properly warn people when stupid, annoying cats are around, and they're a bit hard to sell because the live demos don't work out.
Between the two stores there's a really, really big billboard. It's trans-dimensionally massive, and seems to be able to inject itself into eyeballs such that it can be seen all over the world. You can barely make out the stores, which are incredibly tiny in comparison.
Dave pays billboard owner Boogle to display "Brass Cat Shoes" in type that will occupy 1 full degree of arc of a viewer's vision, vertically. He also pays for an equally large arrow, to be displayed, pointing to his store, down and to the right.
Dave's traffic level increases massively, and because he now stocks Bronze Cat Shoes (which, while unworthy of a discriminating cat-shoer, are moderately functional), he gets the sale. In fact, he gets most of the sales. Boogle counts cars, and pockets their toll.
I'm sure it is somewhere, the world's a big place.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Google will gave them coupons for 10% off on gmail.
And ten thousand "house brand" products that look enough like the national brand that you can tell what the cheaper product is supposed to be.
This has been going on long before Google.
Doing it online changes nothing.
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, it doesn't go away." - Philip K. Dick
I notice a lot of analogizing (is that a word?) going on. I often find it useful to make a link back to an earlier technology, so perhaps it's best to imagine if the telephone directory enquiries service did this. Given that most people read English left-to-right, top-to-bottom, I guess the nearest equivalent would be if directory enquiries gave you the closest matching number, and then if you rejected it interleaved an advert for a competitor of the company you were searching for.
It feels kind of icky to me. Not obviously 100% wrong and illegal, but still kind of icky.
If I search for my site name (not a real word, just a couple of letters (5)), a very big web social site, with a name similar to mine (1 letter changed), appears always on top. A loose match wins over a perfect match.
Google advertising is not fair, people dispalyng ads shoud be able to fix the minimun price for his web page space. Without this mininum, Google pais whatever they want, not what advertisers are paying for the page space. Someone said 'abusive monopoly'?
What's in a sig?
There are sponsored links on Google?! Where? Oh.. right.
Firepond seems to sue anyone and anything.
http://w2.eff.org/patent/wanted/patent.php?p=firepond
The Firepond/Polaris nexus seems especially dubious.
False. Google routinely trumps perfect matches with aproximate ones if they link to big sites. Coincidence? No, money.
The unfair point, is that pople selling web space cannot set a minimun price. Google pays what they want, NOT what they are being paid for web advertising space.
What's in a sig?
What this is akin to is putting the M sign over YOUR restaurant that is NOT a McD franchise.
Google is NOT advertising for McD, it is advertising for Burger King with McDonalds name. You bet McD would be pissed about that.
And in holland at least it is most likely against the law as well. We don't allow negative advertising. You can't use your competitors name.
Sorry, but I really can't see google as the good guy here.
If I build up a reputation worth googling and then you use my name to buy ads leading to your site, something is wrong.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
"Pay us money, or we'll abuse your trademark".
"...depend on the exploitation of the competitor's trademark..."
Which is where the confusion lies. Trademark law doesn't exist to completely protect someone from using the trademark in any way, shape, or form.
Remember the Pepsi Challenge ads? It's perfectly legal to create an ad that says I'm as good as Coke, or better than Coke, or that more people prefer me to Coke. What I can't do, however, is create a competing product and slap a Coke label on it. IOW, I can't market my product under the same name, as that would lead to customer confusion: Which Coke is the real Coke?
And since that's ALL trademarks do, pretty much anything else falls under fair use.
Which brings us to Google. Do a search on Coke and Google doesn't display a natural search result that says "Coke" but takes you to Pepsi. That would be infringing. They may, however, display the natural search results AND display an ad that says, "Like Coke? Try Pepsi."
An action no more illegal than your local grocery store printing a Pepsi coupon when you buy a Coke.
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
This seems legit to me. It isn't even restricted to the Internet. For instance, if you go to the grocery store, often you'll get printed coupons for competitors to the products you bought. And if you go to a foolish restaurant which only offers Pepsi products and ask for a Coke, they're not only allowed but encouraged to say "Would you rather have a Pepsi?". What they're not allowed to do is give you a Pepsi when you asked for a Coke, but that's not what's going on here.
About 6 years ago, I did a search for Geiko on AOL's search engine. Amazingly, I got 3 pages of insurance companies listings, before they showed me one of Geiko's. I have never used AOL's search engine since. They knew exactly what I was looking for, and they tried to redirect me.
Am I the only one finding that searching for products and "best prices" on google seriously sux. I keep being sent to product search sites that represent a cartel of dealers and often they dont even sell what I want thus wasting my time on some brown bagged Google payola website. Also these cartel search sites often are not the best place to actually find a good price or range of related products. Google really needs to fix this as Im sick of being directed to sites that don't seem to have anything to do with the 1-3 keywords I input. You know if I enter "review, Widget 1, .au" you would expect a product review of widget 1 on an Australian website, nope you get a page in Taiwan for an associated product with prices that mean nothing to me.
Let me be the first to say google is google bombing it's own results. Good times, good times...
Why is common sense called that if it's not common?
Who the fuck clicks on the advertisement links?
"Obviously, nobody likes it when you give their customers other options. But it's not trademark infringement."
Of course it's trademark infringement. A company is paying Google $$$ to have their company associated with a phrase that's legally registered to another company.
Google allows anyone to outbid a trademark owner to the point where the trademark owner doesn't show up at all. Now, instead of FirePond paying to have their ad on Google, they have to outbid all their competitors, just to enforce their legally recognized trademark.
Imagine if other ad mediums worked this way. Don't want a competitor using your trademark in their magazine ad? Fine. Pay the magazine $$$ more then the competitor. Great for the magazine. Bad for companies and consumers alike, since the company's are going to pass along that cost to the consumer.
I can understand why the plaintiffs are pissed.
I think you could use that argument to argue that it actually strengthens their trademark.
The fact that those specific trademarked words are required to be said to display a product is the intention of trademark. However, I think it could easily go the other way, as you quickly enter into dilution of the trademark as it's not the searcher entering those terms--they may be entering some generic term that likely appears on the tradmarker's website (thus a keyword for their trademark), but if that term stands for everything else, as Google somewhat implies with the paid-by-keyword ads, then their trademark may very well be getting diluted.
If someone tried to pay Google to use "Google" as a keyword for generic search, I imagine Google would be pretty peeved about the idea that their trademark is being used that way (even though it already is).
...last time I checked, Google owned Google and all search algorithms therein.
I just did a search for Firepond using Google and their are no sponsored links.
I can't say I have ever seen a search with nothing advertised in the sponsored links.
I think they are preparing for a loss on this one.
Mark Washburn a/k/a Anonymous Coward
As I recall, Goggle is a for-profit business who makes money by selling ad space.
It is NOT the public library, Smithsonian or government printing office. They have no obligation to provide truth, accuracy or anything else. They offer most of their service to the public for free.
ANY free listing they provide is free advertising.
If you're on their site they can direct you (or not direct you) to any brand they want (hey, they're paying for the servers, right?)
If you walk into a Kmart and ask for a designer brand they don't carry, don't be surprised if they direct you to their "Martha Stewart Everyday" line of products. It's their store, and they aren't obligated to give you a comprehensive listing of every competing brand on the market.
Neither is Google.
Google does enforce the trademarks of a well known company I do business with.
I do not know if it is a special arrangement since this is a fortune 100 company that has a battery of lawyers, or is it Google policy.
I am pretty sure Google does NOT run a cross reference of trademarks every time someone places and ad. That would produce pretty bad data anyway. If you think they should block trademarks automatically you are not realistically considering the data they would have to use is full of trademarks that are alive but not used.
I had success a few years back with simply sending Google my trademark registration and requesting a block on Google ads.
Thats about all I know.
this is not the first time I've herad something like this is happening with google
Craig
google adwords tips