International Law

Trademark trouble for Google

Media Post's Just an Online Minute considers a series of trademark lawsuits against Google:

When Google decided four years ago to allow trademarked names to trigger paid search ads, the company had to have anticipated that litigation would result.

And it has. American Airlines, insurance giant Geico and computer services company Rescuecom are among those that have sued Google for trademark infringement. They?ve all complained that Google allows their rivals to bid to appear as a sponsored link when users type their names into the query box.

They tend to argue that they?ve built goodwill in their brand names and that it isn?t fair for rivals to capitalize on that by using those brands to trigger ads. Rescuecom went even further than that in a federal appellate court this week. In an argument before the Second Circuit, Rescuecom?s lawyer said that consumers who search on the company?s name expect to see the company ? and only the company ? in the sponsored results.

But that argument doesn?t appear to be supported by any empirical evidence. In fact, Eric Goldman, a professor at Santa Clara University School of Law, told MediaPost that studies show the contrary: People use brand names as shorthand for broad categories. Certainly in the offline world, people have long done so, using ?xerox,? for example, synonymously with ?copy.?

Another factor that Rescuecom ? and American Airlines and the other litigants ? aren?t considering is that people conduct searches for companies for a variety of reasons beyond simply wanting to navigate to retail sites. For instance, if people want to know about Rescuecom?s reputation, they probably don?t want to get that information from the company itself but from more objective sources. That?s one of the reasons why the digital rights group Electronic Frontier Foundation weighed in on the case, arguing that allowing companies the opportunity to bid on a trademarked term can help protect free speech.

Read more here.

Full post as published by Freedom to Differ on April 07, 2008 (boomark / email).