Google and European Trademarks

European courts continue to show a different sort of attitude towards search engines, this time ordering Google to stop displaying third-party ads in its search results.

A French court ruled that Google and its French subsidiary could not sell search-related advertisements against the trademark of the fashion designer Louis Vuitton Malletier, and charged Google with trademark counterfeiting, unfair competition and misleading advertising. U.S. courts have ruled in the opposite direction (viz. in Google’s favor) in a similar case brought by Geico.

In an earlier case, the court ruled that Google infringed on a hotel’s trademark by allowing rivals of the hotel chain to bid on keywords of the hotel’s name, and then having their ad appear prominently in the search results.