Tuesday, September 4, 2007

Is there any end to these bogus Google suits?

You may have read that Google dodged yet another of the trademark suits lobbed against it by companies claiming that it's illegal for other companies to "buy" their names as a keyword term. This time around, the loser was American Blinds and Wallpaper Factory--which dropped its suit after four years--but no matter who is doing the suing, these plaintiffs have always seemed fundamentally out of it. Though I noticed that the company does, in fact, buy its name as a keyword these days, it always seems as though the way most of these companies must end up suing is because they were once so naive about search advertising that it wasn't until a corporate higher-up Googled the company name that they realized another company could "buy" their name. But I've long felt that to term this kind of media buy as purchasing another company's name is essentially a misnomer. What the advertiser is buying is an adjacency to its competitors name, which is no different than a Ford buying a billboard next to a Toyota dealership. But the lawsuits continue. Next up on the court docket? American Airlines.

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