April 5th, 2009
AdWords suit is alive
The Second Circuit Court of Appeals has resurrected Rescuecom Corp.’s trademark case against Google, Bloomberg reports.
The company sued in 2004, saying allowing advertisers to use the company’s trademarked name as an AdWords search term violated trademark. A federal court had dismissed the case, but the Appeals Court said that was error.
“If the searcher sees a different brand name as the top entry in response to the search for ‘Rescuecom,’ the searcher is likely to believe mistakenly that the different name which appears is affiliated with the brand name sought in the search,” the three-judge panel ruled.
