Google wins another trademark case

Placing rival ads next to search results for a specifically-requested company is not illegal

Google has scored another legal victory with the dropping of a trademark infringement lawsuit.

American Blind & Wallpaper Factory brought a case against the search engine for allowing rival companies to show advertising that appears when users search for that business specifically.

'From the start, we've said that American Blind & Wallpaper Factory's claims were baseless, and that Google's trademark policies are perfectly reasonable and lawful,' said Michael Kwun, Google's managing counsel for litigation in a statement.

The suit – filed in 2003 – is one of a number of successful cases the search engine has won over trademark infringement.

In a similar suit brought by insurance company Geico in 2004, judge Leonie Brinkema ruled that 'as a matter of law it is not trademark infringement to use trademarks as keywords to trigger advertising'.