For the fifth time since May, Google has been sued for trademark infringement on AdWords.
This lawsuit, brought by computer software company Ascentive, in the federal district court in the eastern district of Pennsylvania, alleges that Google wrongly allowed other companies to use Ascentive’s trademarks to trigger pay-per-click search ads.
Nothing new there, but the suit does on to allege that Google wrongly removed the company from the organic results listing of Google.
Ascentive alleges that Google removed the Ascentive site FinallyFast.com from the organic search results earlier this year. The company says that traffic then plummeted to around 500,000 visitors a month, from 1.9 million in January.
In its lawsuit, filed , the company alleges it owns the trademarks on a host of terms including FinallyFast.com, FastAtLast.com and Spyware Striker.
Ascentive complains that Google allows rivals to purchase terms like Finally Fast as keywords that triggered ads for their sites. “Google’s unauthorized and willful use and sale of Ascentive’s trademarks in connection with its advertising programs … is likely to cause confusion, mistake or deception as to the source of the goods and services offered,”
Google has prevailed in at least one other lawsuit where a company complained that it was wrongly removed from the organic search results. In that case, directory and search engine KinderStart.com unsuccessfully sued Google after it stopped showing KinderStart’s site in the results.
Not only did a federal district court judge in California throw out the case, but ordered KinderStart’sto pay $7,500 in sanctions for having brought the action.
As much as I don’t like Google because of the monopolistic control over the search category, they should have the right to decide who they promote and who they don’t promote by listing them.
I have no problem with it as long it isn’t for punitive measures, like Baidu was accused of:
http://www.thedomains.com/2009/04/24/search-engine-accussed-of-blocking-natural-search-results-of-an-advertiser-who-cut-their-ppc-spending/
I wonder if threir traffic slowdown had anything to do with the fact that I havn’t seen any of their ads on TV late night in a long time either?
I wonder if threir traffic slowdown had anything to do with the fact that I havn’t seen any of their ads on TV late night in a long time either?
Oops…forgot to say great post! Looking forward to your next one.