Yahoo sued for buying trademarked keywords on Google
June 17th, 2006
Yahoo and three other companies have been sued over trademark infringement, for bidding on trademarked brands as keyword phrases in Google’s AdSense pay-per-click program.
The lawsuit, filed in Colorado by JP Enterprises, claims that Yahoo and the others were bidding on keyword phrases using variations of the domain name of their dating web site. Yahoo and the other two companies named in the lawsuit run their own online personals services. JP Enterprises says that companies purchasing keywords in this manner causes consumer confusion and negatively influence their sales.
This, coming on the heels of a recent lawsuit between Geico and Google, seems to have a pretty predictable outcome. In her written opinion, the judge wrote that using “Geico” in the headline or text of a sponsored link ad is trademark infringement but that Google’s selling of those keywords is acceptable. Many lawyers believe that this decision could catalyze a plethora of new lawsuits as companies sue each other over the keywords used in their pay-per-click campaigns.
