Trademark Case against Google May Be Dismissed

A U.S. judge said on Friday he will decide as early as next month whether to dismiss a four-year-old trademark abuse case brought against Google.

Judge Jeremy Vogel of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California said Friday that he would consider a dismissal motion in the suit brought against Google in 2003 by American Blind & Wallpaper, an online reseller of window blinds.

Google’s search ad regulations allow marketers to bid on trademarks such as company names as keywords to trigger ads, but do not permit them to use those trademarks in ad headlines or copy.

Google’s outside counsel argued before the court that the search-ad case resembles a pharmacy featuring store brand headache remedies next to name-brand products. “We don’t allow advertisers to claim they are American Blinds,” said Michael Page, according to a Reuters report. “We allow them to show ads based on their competitors.”

But counsel for American Blinds argued that the interactivity of the Web meant that customers who typed in the company’s name were actively searching for it, not for competitors, and thus customers were being diverted by Google search ads on the trademark.

Judge Vogel noted that previous federal rulings on the trademark-as-keyword issue cut for both sides in the case. A 2005 decision found that 1-800 Contacts had no infringement case against WhenU for serving pop-up ads for rival providers against its trademark. But in 2004 a federal judge found for the trademark owner in a Playboy magazine lawsuit against Excite and Netscape for showing banner ads triggered by the words “playboy” and “playmate”. That suit was settled out of court shortly after the decision was handed down.

Google has chalked up wins in two previous trademark suits by GEICO and computer recovery site Rescuecom. The decision in that suit is currently under appeal.