Google Outlasts American Blinds In Trademark Suit
If ever proof was needed that it is very costly and very time consuming for a small company to take on a much larger company in court then American Blinds has learned its lesson in going against Google.
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Being a Google lawyer just got a whole lot busier – the world’s largest airline, American Airlines, is suing the world’s largest media company, Google, for allegedly selling its trademarks as keywords to third parties that use them to advertise within Google’s AdWords service.
American Blind and Wallpaper Factory first filed its trademark infringement suit four years ago against Google for allegedly selling its trademark names to search advertisers In 2005, a New York Federal court ruled the suit could continue based on claims of trademark infringement, unfair competition, contributory trademark infringement and contributory dilution, but the court also threw out the company’s claim of “tortuous interference with prospective business advantage." The company wanted stopped Google’s sale of its trademarks in keyword search bought by other companies given that competitors' ads can appear on results pages turned up by searches for 'American wallpaper' and 'American blind.'
But now two years later the company has given up the lawsuit, claiming its management needs to put more time into running the company than in pursuing legalities. It also said the fact that American Airlines has filed its suit – and it is a much larger company with much deeper pockets to pay the lawyers – had an effect on its decision.
"We still believe that what Google does is wrong, but this is no longer our fight. Our competitors should know that our settlement agreement with Google in no way limits our ability to object and seek legal relief if they continue to buy our trademarks as key words from any search engine, including Google."
Google doesn’t quite see it that way.
"From the start, we've said that American Blind & Wallpaper Factory's claims were baseless, and that Google's trademark policies are perfectly reasonable and lawful," said Michael Kwun, managing counsel for litigation at Google. "Now, with trial approaching, American Blind decided to withdraw all of its claims. We are very pleased with this outcome and to note that Google has not paid and will not be paying any settlement fee, our trademark policies remain unchanged and we've made no special exceptions for American Blind."
Under the settlement both parties are liable for their own legal fees, and Google does not make any payments to American Blinds. As far as Google and the rest of Silicon Valley sees it, Google wins hands down and the slow pace of the US court system is a wondrous thing to behold. The case was to have gone to jury trial later this year.
Now what everyone is waiting for is how Google chooses to handle American Airlines. Drawing things out for as long as possible to dry up legal funding and take obsessive amounts of management time won’t work there. But no doubt the Google lawyers will find something that does work.
- Philip Stone September 7, 2007
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