From the Reporters
Carole Matthews

Hijacking Trademarks

 

A recent suit brought against Google by AXA insurance company accuses Google of letting clients hijack other businesses' trademarks using its Adwords service, an AP story reported today. According to a source close to the insurer, AXA filed the lawsuit when Google sold some of AXA's registered trademarks as advertising search terms to a Google client.

It's just one more complaint against the search engine's selling of keywords. In January 2004, Rod Kurtz mentioned a recent update that drew the ire of many small businesses in Google Update Draws Criticism from Small Biz. In his piece, he noted that business's purchasing keywords also were automatically given a list of synonyms by which people could find their sites, often causing irrelevant traffic be sent their way.