A federal court has handed Yahoo a victory in a lawsuit stemming from a dispute about pay-per-click ads.
The case, questioned whether Yahoo should have allowed a keyword allegedly associated with one company to trigger an ad for a rival.
High-end meat retailer Heartbrand Beef, based in Yoakum, Texas, says it’s the only U.S. seller of “Akaushi” beef, or beef from cattle that were descended from a breed originally from Kumamoto, Japan.
The Texas company alleged that a rival beef marketer, Lobel’s of New York, used the term “Akaushi” to trigger pay-per-click ads on Yahoo. Heartbrand argued that this use of the term Akaushi was misleading and constituted a “false designation of origin”–which is prohibited by the federal Lanham Act.
Yahoo argued that allowing a term to serve as a trigger for a search ad was not a use in commerce, which the company said was required for a Lanham Act violation.
Federal district court judge John Rainey of the southern district of Texas sided with Yahoo.
“Heartbrand’s allegation as to Yahoo is that, at the direction of other parties, Yahoo placed a link to lobels.com in response to a user searching for the term ‘Akaushi.’ To call this a ‘statement’ would stretch the meaning of that word,” he ruled.
While other companies have sued search engines for allowing words closely associated with one company to trigger ads by rivals, no U.S. court has definitively ruled against a search company for doing so.
great news…a judge that kinda gets the Internet.
Google should send yahoo a bottle of champagne.
Great decison.
Here ye’, here ye’…..let not a search be influenced by misguided hand !
Very encouraging news. It is nice to see common sense prevail in this one (not that the law is always full of common sense but still nice all the same).
Heartland Beef does not own a TM that I can locate on the term – Akaushi.
The wiki comments sound like salesmanship.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akaushi
I am confused why Heartland shows up when you do a TM search in USPTO for akaushi.
Can’t other beef companies have access to this specific beef?
Is there a standard that the beef must be 100% akaushi beef?
Couldn’t other steers have an akaushi bloodline?
Will this ruling open the door slightly wider for abuse by the search companies?
Ricardo
They do not have a trademark.
They claim they have an exclusive marketing agreement for that type of beef.
That’s one party who had quite a “beef” with Yahoo. 🙂
After doing some research, Heartbrand is the ONLY company outside of Japan that sells this beef and the only company outside of Japan to have 100% full blood Akaushi. Other meat companies do sell it via their supplier, aka Heartbrand Beef. Do some research with Texas A&M…They can tell you anything you want to know.