San Francisco — Rosetta Stone, the Arlington based maker of language-learning software, is joining a growing crowd of companies, filed a lawsuit today against Google for trademark infringement, in the US District Court in Virginia, where the company is headquartered, alleging the Internet search giant for allowing third-parties buy permission to use other people’s trademarks on AdWords online advertising program.
Rosetta Stone claims that Google is unlawfully allowing its name and other trademarks to serve as keywords that other businesses can use to target paid advertisements to people on the Internet.
“The lawsuit seeks an injunction barring Google from selling any Rosetta Stone keywords to advertisers.”
“Google and its advertisers benefit financially from and trade off the goodwill and reputation of Rosetta Stone without incurring the substantial expense that Rosetta Stone has incurred in building up its popularity, name recognition and brand loyalty,” Michael Wu, general counsel of Rosetta Stone, said in a statement.
The company in the lawsuit said that when other firms buy Rosetta Stone’s trademarks for keyword searches, ads for their own Web sites appear and unfairly direct people into thinking they are going to the Arlington firm’s site.
Rosetta Stone alleges that it owns US-registered rights to terms such as “global traveler,” “language library,” “dynamic immersion,” “adaptive recall,” and “the fastest way to learn a language guaranteed.” It also complains Google borrows terms that are “confusingly similar” to the Rosetta trademarks to third-parties and pirates on AdWords.
“In fact, many of Google’s “Sponsored Links” are expressly designed to draw consumers away from Rosetta Stone websites,” the filing states.
Google in a statement said that it had yet to be served with a copy of the lawsuit and so could not comment on specifics, but confirmed its policy is to allow trademarks to be used to target AdWords advertising.
“We allow trademarks to be used as keyword triggers in AdWords because users searching on Google benefit from being able to choose from a variety of competing advertisers,” said Google spokesman Andrew Pederson.
“Just as it is reasonable to expect a range of brands on any shelf in a grocery store, providing users on Google with more than one option when they search for a brand name or other trademark helps them to find the best product at the lowest price.”
According to trademark law analysts, the issue stalls at whether the practice confuses consumers. Google argues, for example, that when a consumer searches for Huggies diapers and an advertisement for Pampers appears, most consumers are aware that the Pampers ad will lead the consumer to the Pampers Web site.
The complaint is the freshest of nine similar lawsuits against Google since the company changed one of its trademark policies for its AdWords program, according to Santa Clara University law professor Eric Goldman.
Google has asserted its ground in similar lawsuits, which have yet to be resolved in court.
In May, Google modified its trademark policy in AdWords in the United States that allows some ads to use trademarks without permission, saying the change brought the California company more in line the industry standard.
“This change will offer you the opportunity to provide users with more relevant information, choice and options while respecting the interests of trademark owners,” Inside AdWords crew member Dan Friedman told Google advertisers in a May message at the firm’s official blog.
And while companies argue that their business is being damaged by Google’s practices, Goldman said courts will focus on whether consumers are confused as to the source of or affiliation of the product or service they are trying to buy.
“That is where things are unclear,” Goldman said. “There is not a lot of social science explaining what consumers think when they do search and if there is consumer confusion.”
Almost nine other companies have filed similar suit against Google for the same policy, including American Airlines and Geico.
“It is completely normal for a supermarket to stock different brands of cereal on the same shelf or for a magazine to run Ford ads opposite of an article about Toyota, so it does not make sense to limit competition online by restricting the number of choices available to users,” Google said in a previous statement about the AdWord controversy.