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Geico Threatens Sites Over Search Engine Ads
By David Utter
Expert Author
Article Date: 2005-09-13
Fresh from a settlement with Google over a lawsuit on usage of its name in AdWords searches, Geico has turned its attention to the competition.
Berkshire Hathaway's Geico auto insurance unit has begun dispensing warning letters to other insurers who purchased the Geico name as a keyword for search engine advertising. According to AdAge's Kris Oser, Geico now believes it has the legal grounds to act against infringing competitors.
"We're aggressively defending the use of our trademark in instances where we think it's being infringed," Geico senior counsel Jonathan Shafner said in AdAge. The SEO community watched his firm's lawsuit with considerable interest; a court win could have wrecked the search ad business for Google and its competitors.
While the presiding judge wrote in an opinion that keyword buying could lead to consumer confusion, the practice of selling those keywords was acceptable. Judge Leonie Brinkema (U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia) unfortunately did not directly address whether the purchase of trademarks as keywords constituted trademark infringement.
AdAge notes that with that "open-ended" opinion, Geico has begun issuing its cease and desist letters to smaller web sites affiliated with insurers. "No major insurers use our trademark in search engine advertising," Mr. Shafner said in the article.
About the Author:
David Utter is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business. Email him here.
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