SEO Blog

Earlier today, a US district court ruled against Google in a trademark action over the sale of the terms “Geico” and “Geico Direct” in AdWords. The judge decided that there was infringement against Geico when third parties used those terms in the text of sponsored ads.

This ruling is sure to cause much confusion in the online advertising space, and will likely bring further court fights. It is in apparent conflict with prior case law precedents, which indicated that that the use of trademarks in keyword advertising is legal.

Here’s some information on this case, and background on the prior rulings. In May 2004 Car insurance firm Geico sued both Google and Yahoo! subsidiary Overture in over the use of its registered trademarks as search terms in the sale of keyword advertising services of the two search engines, and their networks.

Prior to April 2004, Google had respected requests from companies that had requested that their trademarked names would not be available for third parties to buy advertising against. But in April, Google made a major policy change, which resulted in numerous lawsuits against Google – including the action filed by Geico.