AXA sues Google over Adwords

[Marc Gear]

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http://www.insurancejournal.com/news.../27/41513.htm:

Google, the Internet search engine, has been hailed into a French court by insurance giant AXA over its sale of "adwords" – a feature that sells ad space based on search words.

According to news reports from Reuters and the BBC, Google's service has allowed AXA's competitors to introduce words that come up when Google users search the company's name. AXA claims that the use of such words infringes on its patents and copyrights, and wants to stop Google from selling them.

Selling advertising has become an increasingly important source of revenue for Google, which is rumored to be preparing an initial public offering of its shares. AXA's claims, which have also been made by other companies, could, if enforced, reduce some of that ad revenue.

Google has already appealed the ruling of a French court made last October that awarded 75,000 euros ($88,875) in damages to an online travel agent who sued the company for selling "adwords" that it claimed infringed on its trade name.

The ads appeared when the company's name was searched and included links to rival companies. Google was also ordered to end the practice within 30 days, but that ruling too has been appealed.

what impact could this have if AXA win? esp for french affiliates doing CPC?

ofc google could just stop indexing AXA

(mods pls move if necessary)

[FleaPit]

If it's a frecnh court then it is an almost certainty that Google will loose this one.

[Spreader]

http://ecommerce.internet.com/news/n...346161,00.html

[sboxster]

Yeah, I'll be watching this with interest too. It's always amazed me that Overture, Espotting and all the other PPC services have a vetting or editing step that ensures that unless you are the brand or offer to sell the brand of the keyword on your site, you're not allowed to bid on it. G has always had a more agressive and in my view fair approach, which is that unless your brandname is registered with them and you can prove it, they will allow any competitor to bid on it.

American Wallpaper and Blind are the US legal champions for this type of action, having won an initial case against WhenU (which of course they're appealing because of the awful legal precedent it would set if they didn't) but they are now taking on Google and the initial results are going Google's way.

My own view is that if the brand owner can't get to the top of the SERPS by their own efforts or by being clever with PPC, then they deserve the online thrashing that they get at the hands of their competitors and/or affiliates.

Another interesting question is raised by this issue - is it right or reasonable that a merchant forbid its affiliates from bidding on their brand? Again, my logic says that if the merchant's doing PPC then why not let their affs take over and do the maths so that the amount they're paying out in aff commissions is less than they were spending on PPC? Most merchants can't seem to make this mental leap, however, and seem to need complete control of their brand's presence online. What they miss in taking this approach is that the SERPS and PPC spaces that would otherwise be full of their own and their aff's advertising are now full of their competitors' ads as they've banned their affs from bidding - so the policy ends up with them having less online presence and leaving space for their competition.

(oops, looks like my "quick post" has just turned into an ethical essay )

Anyway, like I said, it'll be interesting to see how this pans out

[harris1]

This has taken an interesting turn from what I understand. It looks like Google is going for all or nothing on this.

I have read in a couple of places that they plan to remove all restrictions on PPC bidding, in the US market in the first instance.

They believe that they have a strong legal case for doing this and that it is not reasonable to expect them to vet and protect every single trademark on the planet.

They will mean that they will no longer restrict the bidding on brand keywords, and remove existing restrictions that are in place (Ebay for example)

They have obviously looked at this and have seen the way it is going. If they loose the trial cases that are comming up it will cost them a fortune. Therefore they are making their position clear and will put all there efforts into protecting this position.

Very interesting.

[Qui Gon Jinn]

cour de kangeroo