Lawsuit Attacks Google's Adwords System

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A US district court judge has set a November date to pick jurors in the civil case against Google and its Adword system. This case could be huge considering 98% of Google’s annual revenue is generated by Adwords.

"The reality is that companies large and small are hurt when Google uses a company's trademark, without permission, for the benefit of the company's competitors and Google," said attorney David Rammelt of Kelley Drye Warren, which is representing ABWF.
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I can kind of see where they are coming from. Google gets money pushing competitors products using someone else name and trademarks.
 
Likely won't win... Trademark requires association between the mark and the product. When you see "sponsored link"... it's not likely that the association between company and marker becomes changed. Had google put the results within regular search results, perhaps, but not due to advertisements.
 
(climb upon soapbox)

This is one of the few times I will not be rooting for Google. Since our company name has an unconventional spelling, we purchased AdWords for "crystalfontz" and several common mis-spellings of it, in order to help direct people who might not know how to spell our name to our site.

Over the years, I have seen several competitors purchase ads that are triggered on the word "crystalfontz". Generally I write them a letter and ask them to remove "crystalfontz" as a keyword in their ads. I remind them that they would probably not be happy to see an ad for Crystalfontz triggered if a customer typed in their company name. So far, each company has been reasonable, removed our name from their keywords, and we have not had to stoop to our threat.

Imagine if Everglide bought an ad triggered when someone typed in "ratzpad"? Or if Toyota ads showed up for "volkswagen". Maybe if typing in "google" brought up paid ads to MSN & Yahoo?

In real life, I think most ad purchasers are reasonable enough to think it through, and not use competitors trademarks to purchase their ads. But as the ABWF lawsuit shows, the honor system is not enough.

E-bay has a way to address it, I would not say it is super, but it basically stops a competitive product from using a trademarked name to describe itself.

I would welcome a way that a company could go to Google, enter in its trademarks, and then indicate that these trademarks cannot be used in ad campaigns without permission by the company that registered the trademark.

The dumb thing is that I do not think it will hurt Google's revenue one bit, and will end up giving the whole AdWords system more credibility.

(step down from soapbox)
 
Wwhat said:
Ok crystalfotz I imagined it, and guess what, I see no problem.
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You say that until people use your trademarks and name to lure your customers away without proper compensation. Right now Google facilitates that and pays nobody anything and rakes in billions of dollars a year. Billions a year using other companies trademarks and names. If played right Google just may lose this one.
 
BoogerBomb said:
You say that until people use your trademarks and name to lure your customers away without proper compensation. Right now Google facilitates that and pays nobody anything and rakes in billions of dollars a year. Billions a year using other companies trademarks and names. If played right Google just may lose this one.
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Someone 'gets it' besides crystalfontz.... Oh and crystal,I agree wholeheartedly with you on this !
 
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