Old Problems and New Lawsuits

On first glance the story in The Times today about Google facing yet another lawsuit seems frivolous at best.

Australia’s competition watchdog - The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission - is seeking an injunction to stop Google from displaying search results that did not “expressly distinguish” advertisements.

Seems a bit odd as Google does highlight advertisements as 'sponsored links' at the top and down the right hand side of the page.

So what is it all about?

Well, yet again it is dredging up the issue of who owns brand trademarks on the search service.

The Commission claims that Google has engaged in deceptive or misleading conduct in relation to the use of its paid links, but is also seeking an injunction to prevent Google from displaying the paid links of advertisers that claimed an association with other businesses or competitors where no such association existed - such as a newspaper site advertising on a car brand term to get people to go to its classifieds section.

Google's own trademark investigation procedure - outside the US - is as follows:

'When we receive a complaint from a trademark owner, our review is limited to ensuring that the advertisements at issue are not using a term corresponding to the trademarked term in the ad text or as a keyword trigger. If they are, we will require the advertiser to remove the trademarked term from the ad text or keyword list and will prevent the advertiser from using the trademarked term in the future.'

Seems pretty clear, but again focus is being placed on the fact that the advertiser has to notify Google, rather than Google preventing it from happening in the first place.

It is an old debate, but keeps resurfacing in different territories around the world as different interactive markets become more mature and sooner or later Google will have to face up to the issue and solve it, otherwise it will keep bubbling until a court decision will come that may seriously dent its AdWords revenue stream.