Google has won a $1.6 million settlement against five defendants that it sued in December 2009 over the use of Google’s name in what the company called “a widespread Internet advertising scam.” Today’s decision involves five of the 50 defendants that Google originally sued: Bloosky, Just Think Media, Crush, Hyper Interactive, Search 4 Profit, and […]
It’s reasonable to say that the world of technology patents is screwed up and headed for some major reform. One area in which this is very apparent is location/mapping/geo. There are a number of seemingly conflicting or contradictory local and local-mobile patents that have been issued over the past several years. Some of these patents […]
Kara Swisher reports Microsoft is considering taking legal action against Facebook for allegedly poaching their employees. Facebook recently hired Microsoft’s global ad sales head Carolyn Everson. That sparked a deeper look at how Facebook may be going after Microsoft’s talent. And Microsoft may potentially use legal action to prevent Everson from working at Facebook. It […]
The effort to get Google to disclose more information about how it ranks sites and the details of its algorithm is nothing new. However that information, among other things, is now being sought by the Texas Attorney General’s office in conjunction with a broad antitrust investigation against Mountain View. According to Bloomberg: Texas Attorney General […]
While Google has settled US lawsuits over its Google Buzz product, the company faces a new — and very similar — lawsuit originating in Canada. The Winnipeg Free Press reports that Tyler Wereha of Rosa, Manitoba, is suing Google over privacy issues related to last year’s Google Buzz launch. The class-action lawsuit doesn’t specify damages. […]
A federal judge has ordered Google to reveal the identities of four AdWords advertisers who were clients of search engine marketing agency Wpromote. The order comes as part of a lawsuit involving Google’s AdSense for Domains and AdSense for Errors programs, in which plaintiffs argue that the search company placed their ads on low-quality web […]
As expected, Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen has re-filed his patent infringement lawsuit against some of the biggest companies on the web. The suit alleges that 11 companies have infringed on technology developed in the 1990s by Interval Licensing (AKA Interval Research Corporation), one of Allen’s companies. The 11 companies named in the suit are Google, […]
The Telegraph reports Google was sued by a Japanese woman because its Google Street View service displayed an image of her home with her underwear hanging in clear sight. The suit is for over $7,000 US dollars or 600,000 Yen. The woman is claiming psychological distress that has worsened her existing obsessive-compulsive disorder. “I was […]
A district court judge in Seattle has granted motions filed by Google and AOL to dismiss a Paul Allen patent infringement lawsuit against those two companies (and others). Judge Marsha Pechman agreed with both Google and AOL, who said that Allen’s lawsuit was too vague. Allen’s patent infringement complaint “failed to identify the infringing products […]
No stranger to lawsuits and regulatory complaints, Google is dealing with a trio of new claims and contentions. Ad reseller partners in China are suing Google for lost commissions and other damages tied to Google’s recent pullout of that market. According to an article in Shanghai Daily: Seven former advertising resellers for Google China in […]
Having caused PR and legal headaches around the globe for Google the company has decided to permanently discontinue its Street-View-based WiFi data collection. Multiple countries have asserted that Google’s Street View practices violated privacy laws for the collection of personal information from unsecured WiFi networks. Google is being fined in Spain and in Canada the […]
For the second time this year, Google has lost a lawsuit in France related to the search suggestions that appear on Google Suggest. The recent case involved the appearance of the words “rapist” and “satanist” in search suggestions for the plaintiff’s name. The plaintiff had previously been convicted on appeal for corrupting a minor, but […]
Google is taking what it calls “rogue pharmacies” to court in an attempt to prevent them from continuing to advertise on Google. In today’s announcement, Google says it has filed a civil lawsuit in federal court “against advertisers we believe have deliberately broken our rules.” Google positions the lawsuit as an almost last resort: Like […]
Mediapost reports that Google has been sued by 123 Lock & Key, a Seattle based locksmith company over click fraud. Mediapost said this is the first click fraud lawsuit against Google in five years. In fact, this is the first time Google was sued since settling a click fraud case in 2006 for $90 million. […]
In a continuing effort to battle click fraud, Microsoft puts legal motions into place to stop “click laundering”. Microsoft said the most recent scheme could have defrauded advertisers of hundreds of thousands of dollars. The Plaintiff, Microsoft, “… seeks injunctive relief and damages to remedy Defendants’ fraudulent conduct in perpetrating a sophisticated click-laundering fraud scheme […]
With several lawsuits pending and words like “extortion” being thrown around like baseballs on opening day, Yelp is making changes that it hopes will end the confusion (and lawsuits) over how it operates. The first change — and most important one, in my opinion — is that advertisers will no longer be able to choose […]
The three-year-old lawsuit in which Viacom is seeking $1 billion from Google over copyrighted videos on YouTube moved a step forward today with the release of several court documents. The three documents unsealed today are:
It must be the season for litigation. Two class action law firms have filed suit in Los Angeles federal court claiming that Yelp has attempted to “extort” money from small businesses by offering to remove negative reviews in exchange for payment. The suit contends: Yelp runs an extortion scheme in which the company’s employees call […]
Google, Yahoo Sued by Xerox Over Search Query Patents Bloomberg reports Xerox has sued Google and Yahoo over search patents Xerox holds. Xerox says one patent automatically generate a query based on keyword searches, where Google’s AdWords & AdSense and Yahoo’s Search Marketing, YPN and other products allegedly infringe on. Another patent Xerox is suing […]
MediaPost reports Yahoo has settled a search ad keyword lawsuit with American Airlines. The suit dates back to October 2008 in a federal court and both were expecting a judgement on the case sometime this year. The two companies reached a settlement prior to judgement, although the terms of the settlement were not disclosed. In […]
Pacific WebWorks says it is settling Google suit from the Associate Press reports that the ‘Google Money Kit’ type of alleged scammer will settle the dispute with Google. A week ago, we reported Google filed suit against this organization, in order to help prevent these types of scams. Pacific WebWorks, one of the companies in […]
Google will probably be fighting legal battles in European courts and appearing before EU regulators for some time to come. For the time being Google has lost (at least for now) a copyright case in France arising from book scanning. According to Reuters: The court found against Google after the La Martiniere group, which controls […]
I was pointed to a filed affidavit (PDF) between Jenzabar & Robert Maginn as the plaintiffs versus Long Bow Group as the defendants. In short, it seems like the plaintiff is suing the defendants over trademark infringement within a site’s keyword meta tags. What is interesting is not that there is a lawsuit about this, […]
We have covered many of the search ad keyword lawsuits aimed between competitors or directly at the search engines in the past. Nowadays, it seems like a new suit around this topic is filed weekly. Typically these suits go after trademark violations and the like, but a new suit is focusing on a privacy legality. […]
Switzerland is taking Google to court over privacy concerns related to Google’s Street View service. The BBC reports that Swiss privacy official Hanspeter Thuer is leading the country’s case. Mr Thuer is especially concerned about people shown in sensitive locations such as hospitals, prisons or schools. He also said that the height of the camera […]
Eric Goldman updated us on a case where Yahoo was sued for showing spam and porn pages for a search on a person’s name. Beverly Stayart was upset that when you searched for her name on Yahoo, Yahoo returned some results that were not to her liking. So she sued Yahoo but the court wouldn’t […]
The NY Times blogs about an interesting lawsuit between online mortgage lead generator LendingTree and one of its partners Mortech, Inc., which is allegedly about to help Google launch a LendingTree-like loan aggregation or mortgage lead-gen service. According to a press release issued yesterday about the litigation by LendingTree: Mortech, whose technology helps automate lender offer pricing, […]
Jeremy “Shoemoney” Schoemaker has confirmed that the case between his company and Google AdWords employee, Keyen Farrell, has been settled. Jeremy said, “I can say that my lawsuit against the Farrells was settled,” in his blog. For more history on this case, see the following stories: Keyen Farrell Countersues Jeremy Schoemaker, Claiming Defamation Why Hasn’t […]
The New York Times reports that Microsoft is taking the click fraud battle to court. “Microsoft filed the civil complaint on Monday in United States District Court in Seattle against Eric Lam, Gordon Lam and Melanie Suen, of Vancouver, British Columbia, along with several corporation names they were believed to have used, and several unnamed […]
In March, we reported that a Google AdSense publisher sued Google and won in court, based on a Huffington Post story. Well, it turns out that on May 22nd, Google took this publisher to appeals court and the court overturned the decision. Google’s lawyers showed how this publisher agreed to the Google AdSense terms of […]
We have an update on the story “Google Employee Alleged To Have Bypassed AdWords Trademark Policy For Own Benefit” from about a month ago. Keyen Farrell, the Google AdWords employee, has filed his documents with the court. I have attached those documents below for you to read. In short, Keyen Farrell claimed he did not […]
An Illinois small business owner is suing Google and 46 other companies because he says they’re infringing on his business name: Android Data. Forbes reports that the lawsuit was filed Tuesday, and seeks almost $100 million in damages from Google and all other companies in the Open Handset Alliance, which includes T-Mobile, Motorola, Toshiba, Sprint […]
Well-known internet marketer Jeremy “ShoeMoney” Schoemaker has filed suit against Keyen Farrell, apparently a Google employee alleged to have used Schoemaker’s US-registered trademark in search ads on Google. While issues over trademarks in search ads are heating up, the bigger issue in the case is why Google itself didn’t take action to stop the ads […]
Why I Sued Google (and Won) from the Huffington Post has a story about an AdSense publisher who sued Google and actually won. I have seen the beginning of the story hundreds of times in forum threads, emails and via Twitter. Google terminated the publisher’s AdSense account because of “posing a significant risk to advertisers.” […]
If Christine A. Varney is confirmed as the head of anti-trust for the US Justice Department it may signal tough times ahead for Big G. Bloomberg discusses public remarks that Obama nominee Varney made before the American Antitrust Institute about Google in a June, 2008 speech: The U.S. economy will “continually see a problem — […]
Leading Chinese search engine Baidu has been sued by Chinese medical B2B marketplace Qmyy.com to prevent its site from being blocked or dropped by the engine. According to a factually lean report in China Daily: Qmyy.com required Baidu to stop blocking its web pages from appearing on its search results and pay 1.106 million yuan […]
Agency.com Sues Rival Over Clients from the Wall Street Journal reports that Agency.com is suing iCrossing for allegedly trying to hire Agency.com employees and steal their clients. Agency.com is specifically suing for breach of contract, tortuous interference and conspiring to misappropriate proprietary information and trade secrets. They are seeking $19.5 million in damages from iCrossing. […]
Profy reports that a Russian company is suing Google for $3 billion over Google’s contextual ad program, AdSense. The Russian company, Era Vodoleya, claims they patented contextual ads a year before Google came out with AdSense. The funny thing is this is not the first time Google was sued for patent infringement over AdSense. We […]
India’s National Newspaper reports that India’s Supreme Court is suing Google, Yahoo and Microsoft for allowing “sex selection” ads. India has a law that does not allow the sale or advertisement of services that allow people to pick the sex of their unborn child. India has virtually stopped all advertisements on TV, newsprint and radio, […]
Watchdog clears Google’s street cameras from The Guardian reports Britain’s Information Commissioner’s Office has officially given their approval over the privacy risks with the Street Views option in Google Maps. Meanwhile in the US, Google is arguing in a court case against StreetView that there is no “complete privacy.”