pixpixpix

Not only that but American Airlines has bid on the keywords "American Air" which is not their trademark but just happens to be part of the trademarks of: American Air Corp , American Air and Water and American Air Control

They seem quite happy to bid on parts of other people's trademarks.

They also bid on the keywords "America Airlines" similar to America West Airlines

They also bid on the keyword "AA" used by an number of other enterprises.

Also a trademark/service mark is not copyright. It is not that you cannot use the words or mark at all. The purpose of the trademark/ service mark is to distinguish the services of one provider from the services provided by others, and to indicate the source of the services.

If you search for "american airlines" and the first ad that shows up is for United Airlines and says so very clearly and doesn't mention "american" , that's not very confusing IMHO.

More of a problem would be the ads which link to www.AmericanAirlines.Kayak.com which come up in a search for "American Airlines" or the ad for www.BookAirlineTickets.com which prominently uses the headline "American Eagle Airlines" and comes up in a search for "American Eagle Airlines"

We'll see how this plays out, but I'd be surprised if Google is required to do a full trademark database search for every keyword group suggested by an Adwords advertiser

pixpixpix

see also technology and marketing law blog commentary

Efrem

Complain to your instructor. 25 nsec does not equal 40 MHz, now or ever. One is time, one is frequency (inverse time). 25 nsec equals one cycle at a frequency of 40 MHz, now and forever. Things may be absolute in engineering, but careful use of units of measurement still matters!

Efrem

This is perfectly OK. The requirement is that you have to have a legitimate business interest in the term. There is no requirement that this interest be unique, that nobody else can have one.

When Delta Air Lines went to get an Internet domain name, they found that the Delta Faucets people already had delta.com. They had to settle for delta-airlines.com until they could buy the domain name they wanted from the plumbing supply folks. I don't have any information on that transaction, but it's common to pay a good deal of money and also post a prominent link to their new domain on your Web site for a year or so. The reason they had to do this is that Delta Faucets had as valid a business interest in delta.com as they did.

This is different from cybersquatting, where you register delta.com (or whatever) before DL figures out this Web thing, even though you have no business interest in the name, and then extort money from them for it. Cybersquatting is illegal, as well as nearly irrelevant these days as companies that haven't figured out this Web thing are pretty thin on the ground. If you try it, the company whose name you registered can appeal to the domain registrar for the top-level domain in question, who will then give them the domain name at no fee (if those are the facts). Nobody questions AA's business interest in the above variations on their name.

venk

I think the point was that AA's claim was sort of like accusing a vendor of selling goods stolen from them while themselves purchasing goods that would stolen from others by the same logic. Either both are true or both are false.

While technically, I don't think AA has a case at all and the whole thing looks silly, perhaps Google needs this wake up call to stop pretending that abuse by their advertisers (with the misleading use of tradenames in their ads) don't happen and/or that they are not responsible at all for such abuse. They might be able to prevail over AA but if companies start to sue Google on a regular basis, that can affect their bottom line.

Since such abuses are short-lived and fleeting, it is not practical for companies to go after each such advertiser, especially when they tend to be small operations. So the only practical alternative is to make the publisher that provides this avenue responsible.

Google needs to create AND enforce a strong policy of non-trademark abuse in their competitor's ads, not because any law necessarily requires it but otherwise, they are antagonizing a large number of credible entities many of whom are profitable customers for Google. Hopefully, AA's goal is just to do that. The monetary loss to AA from such practices, I suspect, is very close to zero (if not zero) in reality but has the potential to grow if unchecked.

On the other hand, getting a few hundred million from Google as settlement, which (while pocket change for Google) can make AA's balance sheet look decidedly better, double or more their quarterly profits and make the management look like geniuses to justify a few more millions to the management from that settlement. Brilliant, eh?

Efrem

Based on my very limited understanding of this area of the law, I think Google is OK as long as (a) the paid links are clearly identified as such and (b) the pages linked to do not mislead a reasonable person into thinking they have any connection to AA - in which case it's basically the advertiser's problem anyhow, not Google's. It's like a Honda dealer sending a sales announcement to a list of Toyota drivers, or to a list of people who looked at Toyotas on cars.com. As long as they don't claim to be affiliated with Toyota or do anything misleading to create that impression, no problem.

venk

I agree, this has already been discussed earlier in this thread. AA is claiming otherwise for (b). And they might be right if the ad uses AA's trademark in the ads but that won't necessarily make Google liable for it.

However, settling the case out of court is always an option for Google for many reasons unless they can get it dismissed off quickly.

AA will also benefit from a few alms in its hat for the effort to window dress a quarter's returns, without Google even having to blink at it.

dhuey

That is indeed an option, and is the likely result in most lawsuits. Here, however, Google has to be very concerned about what this case might mean for future litigation and much of its business model. It wouldn't surprise me if they tell their lawyers to fight this on the merits to the end.

venk

Of course.

If most of the actionable litigation is going to boil down to the use of trademarks within competitor's ads then it would be easier for Google to realize that they do have to police the ads from their advertisers and/or have a strict enforceable policy on such abuse within the ads and settle for that (like they did in Geico's case to separate the sponsored ads clearly but may have to rethink the policy they adopted for (not) policing their customers).

This would not affect their business model except for loss of business from advertisers who would only advertise because they could be deceptive in that fashion. I cannot believe a non-trivial fraction of their business depends on trademark deception by their advertisers.

whirledtraveler

It also seems particularly stupid because this issue has been tried before with google and it's swung against the plaintiffs each time in the US.

Connected1

This case has been settled.

Jaimito Cartero

AA recovered nothing, and the terms are confidential, so hard to see AA getting much out of this.

ContinentalFan

Settlements can save money. I still don't know what AMR was thinking.

justageek

Hopefully they got what they deserved for filing a blatantly frivolous lawsuit -- a lot of money wasted on legal fees.

I'm a big fan of AA, but this lawsuit was absurd.

Connected1

The suit was dismissed on mutual agreement of the parties rather than by the judge himself. You would expect the opposite from a frivolous lawsuit.