Second Circuit Rules Against Google
Posted by: Scott Shaffer
April 13, 2009

Just last week, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals issued an important trademark ruling that affects how businesses can advertise with Internet search engines. The Second Circuit held that the plaintiff, Rescuecom, had properly stated a claim for Lanham Act trademark infringement against Google because Google allowed the ads of Rescuecom's competitors to appear when people typed in Rescuecom as a search term. The decision reversed a Northern District of New York holding that when a business pays for a search engine to display an ad every time an Internet reader entered a competitor's trademark, there was no use of that trademark in commerce, and therefore no infringement.

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