Free for a Fee

Anyone with more than a passing interest in trademark law or the internal workings of Google (we’d imagine the latter might outnumber the former) will likely be interested in a Second Circuit ruling that came down on Friday.

In an opinion penned by Judge Pierre Leval, a three-judge panel ruled that Google must face a trademark infringement lawsuit for selling keywords that trigger ads. Click here for the Recorder story.

The panel reversed a lower court’s dismissal of a case brought by a computer-repair company called Rescuecom. Google had recommended that a Rescuecom competitor use Rescuecom’s trademark as a keyword that would bring a link to the competitor’s Web site. Rescuecom objected to Google’s use of the Rescuecom trademark for these purposes and sued, alleging trademark violation.

The content in this post was found at http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2009/04/06/bad-results-for-google-in-recent-2nd-circuit-ruling-over-keywords/ and was not authored by the moderators of freeforafee.com. Clicking the title link will take you to the source of the post.