German Search Site Wants Google In Court

Claiming that Google violated the terms of an injunction issued from a Hamburg court, German meta search engine metaspinner has “vowed” to take the search engine to court. The dispute once again comes from Google’s trademark policy.

This time, Google is accused of not halting bidding on the keyword “preisparaten” after a Hamburg court ruled that the search engine has to until the trademark dispute is settled. As reported by ClickzNews, metaspinner says that Google is still allowing the term to be used by competing advertisers.

“It shouldn’t be possible that the company’s considerable expenditures to build up the brand ‘Preisparaten’ are exploited and siphoned off by advertising third parties and particularly by Google,” said Stefan Maas, metaspinner media’s attorney.

Preisparaten is the name of metaspinner’s search tool for shopping. The term translates to “price ready”. These European legal woes are not the first for Google. Ever since the company changed its trademark policy, other European companies have taken Google to court.

A statement taken from the Google trademark disclaimer concerning countries outside the US and Canada says, “when we receive a complaint from a trademark owner, our review is limited to ensuring that the advertisements at issue are not using 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.”

It appears Google already has trademark policies in place that are supposed to prevent infringement in countries outside North America. It also appears as though Google is not following its own rules. Inside North America, competing companies are allowed to bid on trademarked items, as long as it is only used in keywords, not ad text.

“When we receive a complaint from a trademark owner, we will only investigate whether the advertisements at issue are using the trademarked term in ad text . If they are, we will require the advertiser to remove the trademarked term from the text of the ad and prevent the advertiser from using the trademarked term in ad text in the future.”

By ignoring or disobeying there own rules, Google seems to have backed themselves into some interesting European legal woes.

Murdok | Breaking eBusiness News
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