Legal Research

Google’s Keeping Their Lawyers Busy [UPDATED]

Google’s trying to head the Department of Justice off at the pass in order to try to reach a settlement concerning their advertising deal with Yahoo, reports the Wall Street Journal today (subscription required).  We’ll see how that goes — a lot of people have already piled on, urging a “no” vote.

There are also rumors that Google will soon reach a settlement with the Association of American Publishers over the Google Books Library Project, in which Google is digitizing books from libraries around the world.  And getting sued by publishers who claim it ain’t fair use.  Google would love to avoid going to court on yet another copyright case.

Speaking of copyright, the Big G has lost 2 cases in Germany regarding thumbnail images.  The German courts ruled that they are not covered by fair use.  European courts IMHO seem to be a lot tougher on Google than their U.S. counterparts.

Oh what fun  (sing it with me!) it is to be (c’mon, like “Jingle Bells”, which is out of copyright, I think) a Google attorney!

Update, 1:10 pm - Oops, forgot to include this one.  Google’s being sued because its Adsense for Domains program encourages people to typo-squat (i.e., register www.bankofamrica.com) and plaster the junk sites with Google ads.  Their response:

“Google has no way to know –- and no reason to know -– whether a given domain in the AFD program could infringe a valid trademark.  And even if Google did somehow have the ability to pluck out those domains which could infringe a valid trademark, Google has no way to know who has registered the domain, be it an infringer, a licensee of the trademark owner, or the trademark owner himself.”

Full post as published by Jenkins Webblits on October 14, 2008 (boomark / email).