Dastar Corp. v. Twentieth Century Fox Film Corp., 539 U.S. 23 (2003), was a copyright and trademark case of the Supreme Court of the United States involving the applicability of the Lanham Act to a work in the public domain.
Google Ads is an online advertising platform developed by Google, where advertisers bid to display brief advertisements, service offerings, product listings, and videos to web users. It can place ads in the results of search engines like Google Search, mobile apps, videos, and on non-search websites. Services are offered under a pay-per-click (PPC) pricing model.
Playboy Enterprises, Inc. v. Welles, 279 F.3d 796, was a ruling at the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. The ruling was an important early precedent on the nominative use of trademarked terms for self-identification on the World Wide Web.
1-800 Contacts Inc. is an American contact lens retailer based in Draper, Utah. The brands that 1-800 Contacts use includes Johnson & Johnson Vision Care, Alcon, Bausch & Lomb and CooperVision. The company was founded as the industry's first way to buy contacts online and has since expanded to provide online prescription renewals, glasses, lens replacements, and the in-house AquaSoft Daily contact lenses brand. In 2006, its last year as a public company, the company reported net sales of US$247 million.
Keyword advertising is a form of online advertising in which an advertiser pays to have an advertisement appear in the results listing when a person uses a particular phrase to search the Web, typically by employing a search engine. The particular phrase is composed of one or more key terms that are linked to one or more advertisements. The most common form or keyword advertising, focused on payment methods, is pay per click (PPC), with other forms being cost per action (CPA) or cost per mille (CPM).
An electronic registration mark is a proposed category of trademark that would restrict the use of trademarked words and phrases in online advertising.
Perfect 10, Inc. v. Amazon.com, Inc., 508 F.3d 1146 was a case in the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit involving a copyright infringement claim against Amazon.com, Inc. and Google, Inc., by the magazine publisher Perfect 10, Inc. The court held that framing and hyperlinking of original images for use in an image search engine constituted a fair use of Perfect 10's images because the use was highly transformative, and thus not an infringement of the magazine's copyright ownership of the original images.
Initial interest confusion is a legal doctrine under trademark law that permits a finding of infringement when there is temporary confusion that is dispelled before the purchase is made. Generally, trademark infringement is based on the likelihood of confusion for a consumer in the marketplace. This likelihood is typically determined using a multi-factor test that includes factors like the strength of the mark and evidence of any actual confusion. However, trademark infringement that relies on Initial interest confusion does not require a likelihood of confusion at the time of sale; the mark must only capture the consumer's initial attention.
Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Inc. v. Bucci, 1997 WL 133313, was a court ruling at the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York. The ruling was an important early precedent on the trademark value of a domain name on the World Wide Web, and established the theory that hosting a site under a domain name that reflected the registered trademark of a different party constituted trademark infringement.
Cartoon Network, LP v. CSC Holdings, Inc., 536 F.3d 121, was a United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit decision regarding copyright infringement in the context of DVR systems operated by cable television service providers. It is notable for distinguishing the Ninth Circuit precedent MAI Systems Corp. v. Peak Computer, Inc., regarding whether a momentary data stream is a "copy" per copyright law.
Google, Inc. v. American Blind and Wallpaper Factory, Inc., No. 5:03-cv-05340, was a decision of the United States District Court for the Northern District of California that challenged the legality of Google's AdWords program. The court concluded that, pending the outcome of a jury trial, Google AdWords may be in violation of trademark law because it (1) allowed arbitrary advertisers to key their ads to American Blind's trademarks and (2) may confuse search-engine users initially interested in visiting American Blind's website into visiting its competitors' websites.
Playboy Enterprises, Inc. v. Netscape Communications Corp., 354 F.3d 1020 was a case regarding trademark infringement and trademark dilution decided by the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. The ruling addressed unauthorized use of trademarked terms when using web search data to determine the recipients of banner ads.
Trademark infringement is a violation of the exclusive rights attached to a trademark without the authorization of the trademark owner or any licensees. Infringement may occur when one party, the "infringer", uses a trademark which is identical or confusingly similar to a trademark owned by another party, especially in relation to products or services which are identical or similar to the products or services which the registration covers. An owner of a trademark may commence civil legal proceedings against a party which infringes its registered trademark. In the United States, the Trademark Counterfeiting Act of 1984 criminalized the intentional trade in counterfeit goods and services.
Network Automation, Inc. v. Advanced Systems Concepts, Inc., 638 F.3d 1137 was a court case decided on March 8, 2011, where the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled that the use of a competitor's trademark as an Internet search advertising keyword did not constitute trademark infringement. In the case, Network Automation advertised their own competing product in search queries that contained Advanced Systems Concepts' "ActiveBatch" trademark. In determining whether trademark infringement occurred, the court evaluated factors relevant to the likelihood of customer confusion outlined in AMF Inc. v. Sleekcraft Boats and concluded that confusion was unlikely.
Tiffany (NJ) Inc. v. eBay Inc. 600 F.3d 93, was a landmark case in which the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit first addressed contributory trademark infringement in the context of online marketplaces.
College Network, Inc. v. Moore Educational Publishers, Inc., No. 09-50596 was an unpublished appellate level case in the Fifth Circuit that upheld a district court jury decision to dismiss the purchase of trademarked keywords as infringing. The original suit was brought on a claim of trademark infringement in the purchase of certain advertising keywords that the defendant countered with claims of defamation and tortious interference, also known as intentional interference with contractual relations. The main issue addressed in the appeal was the sufficiency of the evidence presented in the counterclaims of the defendant. The court upheld the lower court's ruling, but vacated the award for tortious interference.
Lens.com, Inc. v. 1-800 Contacts, Inc., 686 F.3d 1376, is a decision by the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit which ruled that when software merely acts as a "conduit" for providing services over the internet, and does not have an independent value per se, it does not constitute a "good" being "sold or transported in commerce" for the purposes of establishing whether or not a trademark for "computer software" has been "abandoned" under 15 U.S.C. § 1064 and 15 U.S.C. § 1127
Rosetta Stone v. Google, 676 F.3d 144 was a decision of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit that challenged the legality of Google's AdWords program. The Court overturned a grant of summary judgment for Google that had held Google AdWords was not a violation of trademark law.
Google has been involved in multiple lawsuits over issues such as privacy, advertising, intellectual property and various Google services such as Google Books and YouTube. The company's legal department expanded from one to nearly 100 lawyers in the first five years of business, and by 2014 had grown to around 400 lawyers. Google's Chief Legal Officer is Senior Vice President of Corporate Development David Drummond.
Google France SARL and Google Inc. v Louis Vuitton Malletier SA (C-236/08), also known as Google v Louis Vuitton was a landmark decision in which the European Court of Justice (ECJ) held that search engines operators such as Google do not themselves infringe trademark rights if they allow advertisers to use a competitor's trademark as a keyword.
