AdWords allows advertisers to sponsor particular search terms so that, whenever that term is searched, the advertiser's link will appear next to the search results.
Metaspinner accuses Google of selling its trade marked term to rivals, and has already been awarded a preliminary injunction against Google by a Hamburg district court.
However, Metaspinner says Google has not complied with that injunction and has continued to publish ads for competitors. According to Stefan Maas, lawyer for Metaspinner: "It shouldn't be possible that the company's considerable expenditures to build up the brand 'Preispiraten' are exploited and siphoned off by advertising third parties and particularly by Google".
Google is already the subject of several actions over its AdWords service. In October last year the search engine was ordered to pay damages of €70,000 by the Lower Court of Nanterre for allowing advertisers to sponsor the terms "bourse des vols" (flight market) and "bourse des voyages" (travel market), which were registered trade marks of the travel agencies Luteciel and Viaticum.
Controversially, despite the terms in question being generic, the French courts found in favour of the travel companies. They will have the chance to consider the matter again when an April-filed suit brought by insurance giant AXA is heard.
Google is facing a similar action in the US, following the January filing of a suit by The American Blind and Wallpaper Factory. Again, the issue will be whether an ostensibly generic term like "American blind" can be protected.
Most recently, US insurance company Geico sued to protect its registered trade marks, "Geico" and "Geico Direct".