Google trademark grab defies mounting lawsuits

by admin May 17, 2009 at 5:56 pm

Court costs no match for money machine?

Despite facing multiple lawsuits over the sale of trademarked keywords on its web-dominating ad machine, Google has expanded the use of trademarks by US advertisers.

Yesterday, with a post to the Google AdWords blog, the company said it will soon allow the use of trademarks in the text displayed by its online search ads.

“We are adjusting our trademark policy in the U.S. to allow some ads to use trademarks in the ad text,” wrote Dan Friedman, part of the Google AdWords team. “Under certain criteria, you can use trademark terms in your ad text in the U.S. even if you don’t own that trademark or have explicit approval from the trademark owner to use it.”

Read more: theregister.co.uk