Car
insurance firm GEICO sued both Google and Yahoo! subsidiary
Overture in May 2004 over the sale of its registered trade marks as
sponsored search terms in the keyword advertising services of both
search engines.
These services work by allowing advertisers to sponsor
particular search terms so that, for a fee, whenever that term is
searched, an advert will appear next to the organic search
results.
Overture settled in late November, but Google continued its
fight, winning a significant victory in December when Judge Leonie
Brinkema of the Eastern District of Virginia ruled that there was
no evidence that the use of the trade marks as sponsored search
terms caused confusion.
However, she acknowledged that GEICO had produced survey
evidence "sufficient to establish a likelihood of confusion
regarding those Sponsored Links in which the trade mark GEICO
appears either in the heading or text of the ad."
Accordingly, she allowed the case to continue over the question
of whether the use of the trade marked terms in the text of
sponsored ads breached GEICO's rights.
This was unlikely to be a major concern for Google: it has
always allowed trade mark holders to request that their trade marks
do not appear in the headings or text of sponsored links.
In her formal opinion, published in August, Judge Brinkema
wrote: "Google may be liable for trademark infringement for the
time period before it began blocking such usage or for such ads
that have slipped or continue to slip through Google's system for
blocking the appearance of GEICO's mark in Sponsored Links."
Google and GEICO confirmed that the lawsuit has been resolved.
The terms of settlement remain confidential.
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