GOOGLE SUCCESS ON “KEY WORD” SUIT

Google, inc, has successfully settled a lawsuit brought by American Blinds & Wallpaper Factory Inc. over the search engines policy of selling trademarked terms as “key words” enabling competition to appear in the search results alongside the company, product or name the consumer was searching.

The settlement agreement was to allow Google to continue it’s current policies.

American Blinds dropped the suit for financial reasons.

The judge in the case had hinted to the parties’ two points. 1. There was enough evidence of the likelihood of confusion caused by Google for the case to go to trial but 2. American Blinds trademarks were merely descriptive terms and unenforceable as trademarks.

Commentary: Another case, American Airlines vs. Google is still forthcoming. However, it appears courts are leaning to the view that the use of trademarked key words is similar to use of a competitors name in comparative advertising (such as the yellow pages), which is allowed.