August 18, 2005

After Geico v. Google, Google speaks

Google reacts on its blog to the Geico v. Itself case, and clarifies the legal situation of its keyword policies. To the company, the most important part of the ruling is: "the use of [a] trademark as a keyword, without more, [does not] cause a likelihood of confusion". It then recaps its policy, "that prohibits advertisers from using someone else's trademark in their ad text when the trademark owner objects".
Google also reminds to the readers that the company won similar cases in several other jurisdictions, such as Germany and Austria... but completely forgets to mention France, where Google lost all its keyword cases (some of them are being appealed).
Last word to Google: "... don't be surprised if our policy evolves over time. We believe it is possible for an advertiser to create an ad that uses a trademark in a legal and non-confusing way - after all that is what comparative advertising is all about."

Via Google Blogoscoped

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