Anerican Airlines AdWords Lawsuit

Litigation continues over Google AdWords (see previous post). The latest development: Google is seeking to dismiss a suit by American Airlines, reports the Dallas Business Journal.

American's miffed that AdWords can display a competitor's ads next to search results for a company's trademarks (search for "American Airlines" and you might get United ads next to the American results).

Google says this is no different than a drugstore displaying generic drugs next to brand name drugs, or printing a coupon for Minutemaid on the back of a grocery receipt of a customer who bought Tropicana. Good analogies.

What Google's fighting is a line of cases regarding "initial interest confusion," which prohibit using a competitor's trademark in meta tags in order to attract search engines. But Google's an information provider, not a competitor of American. It's a close case - for instance, if Google displayed the ads in a popup that hides the actual search results, that would seem wrong. But where the ads are merely adjacent to the search results, or at the head of the list, I think Google's right.

Closing the Blinds on AdWords Suit

Google's AdWords system allows companies to have their ads run adjacent to search results that relate to keywords, including keywords that are their competitor's trademarks. For instance, if Pepsi wanted to, it could have ads for its soft drinks appear every time a user searched for "Coke". (Just a hypothetical example.)

Is this trademark infringement? A company called American Blind thought so, and sued Google. That suit ended in a settlement yesterday, however, reports Law.com, with no admission of liability. The issue will no doubt be litigated again, perhaps to conclusion.