American Blinds Suit Against Google Over Trademarks To Go To Trial

Apr 18, 2007 at 9:41pm ET by Danny Sullivan

Judge won’t dismiss Google trademark suit from Reuters reports that the long-standing lawsuit over keywords linked to trademarked terms filed by American Blinds against Google will continue to trial. Google’s request for summary judgment has been denied. Google’s won in two similar suits within the US. Courtesy of Gary Price, you can get a copy of the ruling here (PDF format).

Danny Sullivan is editor-in-chief of Search Engine Land. He’s a widely cited authority on search engines and search marketing issues who has covered the space since 1996. Danny also oversees Search Engine Land’s SMX: Search Marketing Expo conference series, maintains a personal blog called Daggle and microblogs on Twitter as @dannysullivan.

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2 COMMENTS ON American Blinds Suit Against Google Over Trademarks To Go To Trial

Shilly, April 22nd, 2007 at 10:31 am ET:

The funny thing is that American Blinds is bidding on competitors terms, see url below. If they are so against it, why are they doing it?
http://www.thesemzone.com/2007/04/end-of-googles-trademark-lawsuits.html

SEM Report Card, May 24th, 2007 at 1:46 am ET:

When Google loses this or an upcoming trademark lawsuit, they will be impacted, but still very profitable. The majority of Adwords revenue comes from advertising on generic phrases like “window blinds” versus trademarks like “American Blind.”

Incidentally, some companies decide not to implement the current trademark policy because they may not have a vested interest in a reseller market, this choice should continue to be left to the trademark holder. The auto industry is a good example, and Ford does not implement the trademark policy on the trademarked phrase “used Ford F150″ because they encourage dealerships and aggregators to handle the used vehicle market.

What eventually will happen in the U.S. and Canada, and has already taken place in Europe, is that search engines will be required by law to completely prevent unauthorized parties from even placing ads on federally protected trademarks.

The real issue here is how “generic” can a phrase be to be allowed trademark status. Let’s look at the company, Discount Tire. People don’t normally search for “discount tire” unless they are looking for the company, Discount Tire. The generic phrase people tend to search for is “discount tires” with an ’s.’

This is where things can get heated. How does the USPTO determine if a phrase is too generic to be trademarked?

…frequently asked questions about the Google Lawsuit

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