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Yet Another Misguided Lawsuit Over Google's AdWords, This Time From Rosetta Stone
from the blame-the-real-party! dept
It's getting a bit tiresome to see these types of lawsuits, but Eric Goldman notes that this appears to be the ninth such lawsuit against Google, claiming trademark violations for allowing people to buy AdWords on trademarked terms (or suggesting them as keywords). This time the company suing is Rosetta Stone, but the complaint is basically the same. In fact, it uses the same lawyers and apparently the same boilerplate language as some previous lawsuits (wonder if they charge full price for reusing the same text?). The problem is the same, however. It's a general misunderstanding of the purpose of trademark law, which does not give the trademark holder full control over the trademark, but merely is designed as consumer protection to stop confusion among buyers or, possibly, dilution of the trademark. But that does not prevent the use in competitive advertisements. And, even if it did the liability would be on the advertising party, and not Google. But Google has the cash, so everyone sues Google.
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Their loss
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And Yes
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They asked for it...
And they're known to be perfectly willing to payoff unfounded lawsuits. That's why everyone sues Google.
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So, I'm thinking:
1. Form a company with the same name as some historic site (let's say, Mt. Rushmore)
2. Get a trademark on my term
3. Force Google to redirect all searches for that to my website
4 ...?
5. Profit?
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Rosetta Stone suing Google
This practice really is ridiculous, and I expect this one to come to nothing also.
What would happen if these brand names started showing up in organic results (left hand side of the page) also, say as the result of a product review?
Would the TM owner then request these pages removed from Google's index?
I wrote more here
http://www.adwordsanswers.com/2009/07/13/adwords-and-trademarks-why-is-google-allowing-them-in -the-usa/
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