As far as I can tell, the legal issue here wouldn't matter if it were a competing company or not. If say, PriceGrabber or PriceWatch were to use the company name in their paid advertising, then GEICO could just as easily sue them.
I do not think that the article is well written but what they are trying to say is that it was alright for Google to sell the keyword GEICO to trigger a paid ad. However, if the ad actually contained the text "GEICO" in the ad, such as "We are cheaper than GEICO", that is where the court had issues.
So, no, this does not at first glance appear to contradict the previous ruling.
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As far as I can tell, the legal issue here wouldn't matter if it were a competing company or not. If say, PriceGrabber or PriceWatch were to use the company name in their paid advertising, then GEICO could just as easily sue them.
I do not think that the article is well written but what they are trying to say is that it was alright for Google to sell the keyword GEICO to trigger a paid ad. However, if the ad actually contained the text "GEICO" in the ad, such as "We are cheaper than GEICO", that is where the court had issues. So, no, this does not at first glance appear to contradict the previous ruling.