Eric Goldman commented on a case between one advertiser using another advertiser’s trademark in Google AdWords. The court has made a decision (PDF), ruling for the plaintiff, Storus, who sued Aroa for using their trademark in the AdWords title text. Eric Goldman said this is one of the first times we have seen the plaintiff […]
The Google Public Policy Blog informed us that Utah has changed the law that restricted search engines from triggering ads based on trademarked terms. This reversal now puts Utah in sync with the precedent set forth by the federal trademark law. In short, you can now legally bid on trademarked terms in Utah, assuming you […]
Google And Microsoft Sued For Patent Infringement from MediaPost reports Google and Microsoft were sued for patent infringement over their paid search platforms. A Ohio based company named Paid Search Engine Tools of Liberty Township said Google’s AdWords and Microsoft’s adCenter products infringe on their patent, “Paid search engine bid management.” The full patent can […]
Lawsuit claims Google stole idea for Sky layer in Earth from News.com reports a Google contractor named Jonathan Cobb is suing Google for allegedly stealing a Sky layer idea from him. Sky layers are data in both graphical and textual form that are used in Google Earth. Jonathan Cobb filed suit in an Atlanta federal […]
Beijing court sides with Baidu in music piracy case from the AFP reports that Baidu has won a copyright case in a Beijing appeals court against the music labels. The court upheld the decision that Baidu is not guilty of property rights infringement for displaying links to web sites that are offering illegal music downloads.
Gary Price reports Google has applied to trademark several terms this year, including Knol, Android, OpenSocial, Open Handset Alliance, Panoramio, Dalvik, and more. These trademark applications are common for companies wanting to protect their new product releases.
Yahoo! Found Guilty of Mass Copyright Infringement from TorrentFreak reports Yahoo China lost the case over linking to unlicensed music in China. Didn’t they already lose the case? Well, in April they were ordered to remove those links and ordered to pay 200,000 yuan. But they then appealed that ruling in November. Now the Beijing […]
Chinese Company Takes Google to Court from the AP reports the case between Guge and Google has begun this week. Beijing’s Guge Sci-Tech Co. took Google China to court for infringement over their name. Guge Sci-Tech Co. registered the name on April 19, 2006 with Beijing Municipal Industrial and Commercial Bureau. Google China didn’t register […]
Yahoo China Appeals ‘Deep Link’ Ruling from Billboard reports Yahoo China is appealing the
An article in the New York Times today explores the “book search” initiatives at Google and Microsoft and the resistance of some research libraries to participating. The reason cited is that both search providers are asking for exclusivity: “Libraries that agree to work with Google must agree to a set of terms, which include making […]
AOL, Google, Microsoft, Yahoo Sued Over Competitive Bidding Patent from InformationWeek reports Performance Pricing filed a patent lawsuit (PDF document) against AOL, Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo over how they use competitive bidding within their search ad marketplace. The patent, named Systems and methods for transacting business over a global communications, was granted in 2005, and […]
Google fined in German Gmail trademark case from News.com reports Google was ordered by a German court to pay $14,000 over using m.gmail.com for their mobile Gmail users. As we know, Google lost the Gmail trademark case in Germany and was ordered to stop using Gmail.com. It appears that Google violated that with m.gmail.com and […]
Over the years, we’ve seen a number of lawsuits filed against search engines or between companies regarding ads that are linked to trademark terms. Below, a rundown on some of the more notable cases. Before the recap, a little background. To those not familiar with trademark law, the cases can seem like guaranteed victories for […]
Perfect 10 has issued a press release announcing it is now going after Microsoft for copyright infringement over including Perfect 10’s images in Live Image Search. Norm Zada, Perfect 10’s president said: Microsoft is showing tens of thousands of extremely valuable celebrity images, along with Perfect 10 images, without authorization, which it obtains from hundreds […]
More parties join Google copyright lawsuit from Reuters reports that eight more parties have joined the class action copyright lawsuit against Google’s YouTube. As we reported earlier, the lawsuit that English soccer’s Premier League Ltd and music publisher Bourne & Co have against YouTube is now beginning to get more support from other companies. Some […]
A flurry of recently granted patents is starting to cloud the local search space. After being granted a patent for location-based search, Local.com this morning announced the awarding of another patent for an “ad supported 411 local search model.” Local.com’s stock shot up 52 percent on the announcement.
I’ve got a patent, you’ve got a patent. It seems that nearly everyone running an Internet company has a patent nowadays. Local.com is the latest to announce a patent in the local space. The patent (no. 7,231,405), which I was unable to locate through a USPTO and Google Patents search, “covers local search technology related […]
USAToday writes about a recently awarded patent obtained by Jingle Networks, which operates the 1-800-Free411 ad-supported directory assistance service. After conducting several searches at the USPTO and elsewhere I was unable to find a copy of the patent itself. However, according to the article: Jingle’s patent, which it bought from inventor Scott Wolmuth, is for […]
Wired is reporting on a lawsuit filed in US District Court in Texas against Verizon and its now spun-off directory division Idearc. The suit (PDF file) claims infringement of patent 5,930,474, “Internet organizer for accessing geographically and topically based information.” This goes to the essence of many if not most local search sites online today. […]
Via Techdirt, Book publisher steals Google laptops from The Register covers the jaw-dropping action of Richard Charkin, CEO of Macmillian Publishing, stealing laptops from a Google booth at BookExpo America to try and prove a point about Google "stealing" books for its book search service. Blogged Charkin: Our justification for this appalling piece of criminal […]
Google’s Eric Schmidt: Viacom’s lawsuit is ‘just a mistake’ from News.com reports that when Walt Mossberg questioned Eric Schmidt about Viacom suing YouTube for $1 billion earlier this, year, Google’s CEO responded that “it was probably just a mistake.” Of course, Mr. Mossberg was not satisfied with that answer. He then probed Mr. Schmidt on […]
Belgian newspapers that sued Google to be removed from its index are now back in, having agreed to use the commonly-accepted blocking standards that they initially rejected as not being legal. Google and the group representing the papers, Copiepresse, have issued a joint statement. That’s below, along with a look at how this is a […]
Google has responded to the copyright infringement case filed against it by Viacom over video content on YouTube. Key takeaway? Google says the DMCA Safe Harbor provisions protect it from liability and wants a jury trial to prove its innocence. Several sources have covered the story already, so I’ll do a round-up of what’s being […]
Via TechDirt, High-Tech Execs Meet With Lawmakers Over Web Search Keyword Law from the Associated Press covers how Utah might not enforce its new law banning ads linked to trademark terms. The law is set to go into effect today. We covered various issues with the law earlier this month. Now Utah lawmakers appear to […]
Yesterday, news came out about Viacom suing Google for $1 billion over alleged video copyright infringement on YouTube. With some dust settling, I thought it would be helpful to recap some of the analysis out there. I’m pulling this roundup mostly from coverage you’ll find on Techmeme. Come along, and we’ll go through the official […]
Viacom in $1 bln copyright suit vs Google, YouTube from Reuters reports that Viacom Inc. has confirmed they will be suing Google over “massive intentional copyright infringement” for $1 billion. The lawsuit has been filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, after claiming “a great deal of unproductive negotiation” […]
Yahoo! China sued for alleged copyright breach at Reuters reports that Yahoo China has been sued by Warner Music Group Corp. and other music giants for linking to “unlicensed music.” The case was filed in early January by “11 companies and seeks damages of 5.5 million yuan ($710,686).” In November of last year, music publishers […]
Last October, Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer gave us a taste of how Microsoft was going to position Google as a copyright leech. Today, Microsoft launched a full-out assault on the company. Google deserves some of this, no doubt. But the idea as Microsoft as some altruistic copyright savior deserves some critical analysis, as well. Below, I’ll dissect Microsoft’s slams against […]
A Belgium court has found that Google did violate copyright when including material from several Belgian newspapers in its search index. Google may have to pay a fine, but the ruling is far more positive for the company. Google can continue to index content without explicit permission. NOTE: The story is developing, so I will […]
Jennifer Laycock’s battle against the National Pork Board over her "The Other White Milk" slogan for breastfeeding t-shirts continues to pick up support. as you can see here at Techmeme. After I did my own write-up about the case yesterday, I followed my own advice and emailed the board. I just got their lame response:
SEMPO has launched the SEMPO Institute, an online school for search marketers. The fundamentals course is live now and will provide tracks on:
TheAge reports that Copiepresse, Belgium’s French-speaking newspapers, are now threatening to sue Yahoo for violating copyright laws. The group does not want Yahoo giving web users archived access to newspaper articles that the newspapers would otherwise charge for. It will be interesting to watch how Yahoo handles this.
A wide range of newly published patent applications and granted patents, covering such ground as subscribed content in search results from Google; tag searching, detecting similar audio files, and simpler support vector machines from Yahoo; geographic based searching from MetaCarta; and data center architecture and smarter results to queries from Microsoft, amongst others…
I saw Should Google Give Brand Owners A Cut? from InsideGoogle earlier, about the idea of Google paying brand owners a share of revenues of those advertising on their names. Then a reader just emailed me asking what I think about the idea. OK, I’ll bite. In short — probably not. More on that below, […]
Some processes covered in patents granted last week by the US Patent and Trademark Office: Microsoft reranking results based upon redundancy of information, Ask reranking pages based upon affinities between searchers, Hewlett-Packard creating queries for searchers to investigate from scanned documents, and; Exalead forming dynamic query refinements from words found in documents located within search […]