Google to be sued by LastMinute.com
4th May 2008 by David North
It would seem that Google’s plan to make a little more money out of Adwords might be about to backfire, in the UK at least. It all stems from the fact that Google is now allowing other companies to bid on competitor’s company names in Adwords. Effectively this means Tesco could bid for the term Asda.
One small problem with this - it’s flying very close to Trademark law in the UK. Part of which means that a company must take steps to protect their Trademark. The first into the breach is Lastminute.com who look like they are going after Google in the courts. I can understand why Lastminute would do this as the holiday market is extremely competitive online and they need to protect the position they’ve built up.
The one issue is that commentators seem unsure if Google is the one that is breaking the law or if it is the companies bidding on their competitor’s terms. It’s a risk for Google but in the short term I think these terms could be extremely profitable for them as people try to protect their name online.
