'A US district court has ruled against Google in a trade mark action over the sale of the terms “Geico” and “Geico Direct” in AdWords, its keyword advertising service. The judge found that there was infringement where the terms were used in the text of sponsored ads.

Car insurance firm GEICO sued both Google and Yahoo! subsidiary Overture in May 2004 over the sale of its registered trade marks as sponsored search terms in the keyword advertising services of both search engines.

In a ruling issued on Monday, Judge Brinkema ruled that GEICO had “established a likelihood of confusion” and that there had been a breach of the insurance firm’s trade mark rights “solely with regard to those sponsored links that use GEICO's trade marks in their headings or text."'

Although Google will undoubtedly fight this one with all they can muster, it would set a bad precedent for future attacks on keyword-based advertising -- attacks for which Google, with record advertising earnings and no apparent policy of filtering advertising based on trademarked search keywords, seems alarmingly ripe. My conjecture? That the problem of a 'likelihood of confusion' could be resolved by displaying a brief message above the text links (clearly marked) to the effect that brands represented do not necessarily correspond with the owners of the marks employed. Expect a swift response on this point.

Source: The Register

Originally by The Register - Internet and Law: eCommerce, 11:26 PM

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