Karlonia.com

American Blind & Wallpaper Factory, a reseller of window blinds, is suing Google for abuse of trademark rights because it wants other companies to be blocked from advertising on the AdWords network when Internet users search for its name.

Google has been sued over alleged trademark violations twice before, once by Rescuecom, a computer repair company, and also by Geico, a seller of auto insurance. In the two previous lawsuits, Google settled out of court with the companies under undisclosed terms, but the judges in both cases had ruled mostly in Google’s favor, noting that Google did not place the trademark terms on goods, advertisements, etc., and that the keywords used did not cause any confusion.

In this case, however, judge Jeremy Fogel did not allow Google’s motion to dismiss the lawsuit, which means that it is slated to go to a jury trial in the US District Court of California. The jury’s ruling in this case may be important because it could set a legal precedent on whether or not Google will be somehow obligated to block ads for keywords that might contain trademarked terms.

In my opinion, these types of disputes should be fought out between the advertisers and the trademark holders, not with Google. Frankly, I do not understand how it is Google’s fault if some company’s AdWords affiliate advertises on the “wrong” keyword because they see a chance to make a few extra sales. Google is simply an advertising medium; they should not be put in the position of a government or a law enforcer in determining whether someone might be breaking a trademark rule or not if they run an ad on keyword X, Y, or Z. Trademark laws, if they are going to exist at all (whether or not they actually should exist is a whole other debate) are supposed be enforced by the government, NOT the search engines or the advertising media.

People should be able to advertise on whatever keywords they want to as long as Google allows it. To interfere with people’s right to advertise like the plaintiffs in these lawsuits seem to want to do goes against the whole spirit of a free market. Therefore, this is not something that I can really support. The plaintiffs need to learn how to use the AdWords system to their advantage instead of using the courts to “protect” their precious keywords from a few savvy advertisers and threatening to make life more difficult for both the search engines and us Internet marketers in the process.