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American Airlines’ Lawsuit Against Google Continues
© Cheryl Hodgson 2007 | Posted on October 26, 2007
On October 24, 2007, Judge John McBride of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas, in an brief one page order, summarily denied Google’s Motion to Dismiss the Complaint filed by American Airlines in Case No. 04:07-cv-00487.
As previously reported in early September, 2007 the Google Ad words issue is a big one for most companies.
http://blog.hodgson-law.com/2007/09/06/googles-adwords-auction-policy—american-airlines-sues.asp
http://blog.hodgson-law.com/2007/09/05/has-your-trademark-become-a-google-tmadword.aspx
Continued auctions of federally registered trademarks by Google to trademark competitors for use in “sponsored advertising” has become big business for Google and a big bone of contention by trademark owners, leading this writer to dub the auctioned marks as “TMadwords.”
While illegal in Europe for some time, the U.S. cases since early 2001 have settled prior to a trial on the merits. So far, there has been no definitive ruling finding Google liable for “contributory infringement.” Google likes to claim it has made only a few hundred dollars from auctions of any a particular mark in issue. So far, none of the cases have involved marks as famous as American Airlines (nor likely as widely searched on the internet, and little if any evidence of the total revenues being generated by Google from the sale of trademarks to competitors of trademark owners has been revealed.
Stay tuned for more from Judge McBride in Dallas!
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