According to the news “Yahoo Settles Trademark Infringement Case With American Airlines“, Yahoo has quietly settled a lawsuit by American Airlines about the alleged use of its name to trigger search ads.
Another article “American Airlines Sues Yahoo! for Trademark Infringement Based on Sale of Keyword Advertising”, mentions that in 2008, American Airlines, the world’s largest airline, brought suit against search engine company Yahoo alleging five counts of federal trademark infringement, dilution and related causes of action under the Lanham Act and an additional six counts of various state law claims, including trademark infringement, trademark dilution, and unfair competition.
The article also states that search engine companies such as Yahoo and its competitor Google earn revenue by selling advertisements shown on the search engine webpages and on the webpages of third parties. When a user enters search terms into Yahoo’s search engine, the search terms are also used to provide advertisements related to the content of the user’s search. According to the complaint, Yahoo allows its advertisers to buy “keyword” triggers to advertisements that include both generic terms and trademarks.
My question here is if search engines infringe on trademark by allowing one company to use another’s name as a keyword to trigger pay-per-click ads. While many companies have sued over this type of practice, no search engine has yet been found liable for trademark infringement. American Airlines filed a similar lawsuit against Google, which also settled. The court could not decide the pivotal issue because these kinds of cases were settled before judging. I think this would lead most companies are very cautious to avoid using trademark of others without permission to prevent from costly disputes as this case.
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I have read some articles online relating to trademark and patent infringement. It seems to me that quite a few giant corporations are suing each and other today under patent and trademark infringement issues. Most of these lawsuits are settled outside the court. A question that raises here is, are these suits just another way of earning money and defaming your competition? Do patent laws mean nothing more than a method to increase profits? Are trademark infringement issues today just another way of driving publicity?
Alway, these issues are related to money. AA are using yahoo for their ads.
Google has the same case with AA. A lot of search marketers and agencies are ignorant to the significance of trademark protection, until they themselves have issues. Everyone seems to think that these trademark suits are fruitless, but that mentality couldn’t be farther than the truth. Google was hammered by the courts in the Geico v. Google suit which forced Google to settle out of court and change their trademark policy. It is only a matter of time before we will finally have real trademark protection in the ads of search engines. I am looking forward to the day a class action is brought against all the search engines. Can you imagine the aggregate dollar amount of compensatory damages?
To allow a competitor to bid to have its its ad to be placed next to trade marked terms of AA is an abuse of its trade mark rights. Its takes unfair advantage of that mark. Its interesting to note that Yahoo would have approached this cases differently if AA was a European company. It turns out protection for trademarks are much stronger in Europe. They usually favor on the side of companies in protecting them from being misused by search engine providers. I believe that if companies like Yahoo continue to operate on two different sets of rules based on geographic location. It will prove detrimental to their business especially if companies come together collectively that have been negatively effected by these actions.
This is the following quote from the suit highlights how AA argues that Yahoo is not operating fairly in comparison to how it acts overseas “In contrast to its practices with respect to the use of trademarks in the United States, on information and belief, Yahoo! takes steps to prevent advertisers in many countries outside the United States from using as keywords the trademarks of others.”
http://www.out-law.com/page-9532