Trademark infringement suit hits search again

A Colorado-based dating Web site has sued Yahoo and three other companies for allegedly paying to have their ads come up when its name is typed into the Google search page.

JP Enterprises, which owns the LoveCity.com site, filed the lawsuit on June 6 in a U.S. district court in Colorado, accusing Yahoo, HDVE LLC, Spark Networks and Insight Direct USA of unfair competition and trademark dilution and infringement. It seeks to recover damages and punitive damages.

Yahoo representatives did not return an e-mail seeking comment. A Sparks Network representative said the company does not comment on litigation. A call to HDVE was not returned, and Insight Direct could not be reached for comment.

The lawsuit claims that Yahoo and the others inserted metatags containing the words “lovecity” and variations on that name as keywords into Google’s AdWords paid search advertising system.

Full story: c|net News.com