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Keyword advertising using competitors’ trademarks is now so well-accepted, it may be hard to remember that the practice used to generate serious debate among lawyers and ethicists. In particular, the search engines drew substantial legal fire from trademark owners for selling “their” trademarks; at one point around 2010, I believe Google had about a dozen simultaneously pending lawsuits.

Recently, a California appellate court dismissed another competitive keyword advertising lawsuit against Google and Yahoo. As far as I know, it was the last remaining lawsuit of its kind. As a result, for the first time in at least a decade, I believe there are no more pending lawsuits against search engines regarding competitive keyword advertising.

About the Ruling

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Case citation: Ison v. Google, Inc., 2015 WL 3395574 (Cal. Ct. App. May 27, 2015)

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