by John Darer CLU ChFC CSSC
A suit between American Blinds and Google should be of interest to structured settlement industry stakeholders. Google, Inc. v. American Blinds & Wallpaper Factory, Inc., C 03-5340 JF (N.D. Cal. April 18, 2007)
The lawsuit revolves around Google's policy of letting AdWords advertisers bid on trademarked terms as the keywords that trigger the pay-per-click ads. Bidders can use the terms only to deliver the ads; they can't use the actual marks in either the headline or the body of the text ads. American Blind claims that policy amounts to trademark infringement and confuse searchers combing the Google index for its Website and products; Google maintains the keywords are just a delivery system that consumers never see.
The structured settlement industry and its consumers have been plagued for almost 3 years by the parasitical display that such ads have on search results. 
Progress has been made but it's a bit like skeet shooting without the "pull". 
At the end of May, U.S. District Court judge Jeremy Fogel denied Google's motion to dismiss the suit and put the case on the fall docket in the Northern District of California, with jury selection set to start Nov. 9, 2007.
Further analysis of the Google v American Blinds case can be found on Eric Goldman's blog.
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