Saturday 23 June 2007

The Michael discusses Google and the law


Today at work, during one of the many interludes to hardcore grafting, I chatted cordially with my boss about the various legal skirmishes that Google are wont to get into. Last week, we discussed the falling-out between eBay and Google whereby the former had withdrawn all sponsored links from the latter’s listings. Something to do with eBay being pi*sed that Google were rivaling paypal with their own payment gateway, Google checkout. That same day I read up on the background of the story on... Google News, coincidentally enough but haven’t checked since. Quite frankly, I’ve neither the enthusiasm nor interest to check again. Not today at least.

Also, I touched briefly on the topic of one of my (very few) posts on this blog: about the lawsuit over Google adwords due to various trademark infringements committed by Google at the expense of American Blind Co. Well, having checked again, this lawsuit is still rumbling on.

This topic should appeal to me: I studied intellectual property a couple of years ago and certainly enjoyed the trademarks section of the module. Somewhat worryingly, perhaps, I’m past giving a flying hoo-hah as to the outcome – or the nitty-gritty of whether Google have actually committed a trademark violation in respect of American Blind’s registered phrases. Shame.

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