Days after the Utah Senate saved the strategy of using trademarked words to trigger ads the Texas courts are reviewing a case that could jeopardize that strategy once again. Wendy Davis's article from MediaPost states that Yahoo! was dealt a blow to its court case defending against American Airlines. Yahoo! had sought to move the case to their home ground rather than American Airlines base camp. The judge denied that request and to boot this is the same judge that presided over American Airlines battle with Google that was decided out of court in favor of American Airlines.
A quick search on both Yahoo! and Google for American Airlines shows that both have stopped serving PPC ads triggered for that Trademarked keyword. Here is my question, doesn't Travelocity and Orbitz and even travel agencies have the rights to bid on those keywords as they are selling the American Airlines product and thus not deceiving the customer. Maybe American Airlines poor service rankings over the past few years are driving this knee-jerk response to eliminate competition (see Forbes 2007 list of top 10 worst airlines. Or Travel and Leisure's December 2008 article.
Even after Google settled out of court with American and stopped serving ads why did the other airlines not jump on this bandwagon to ensure their good name?
I believe this is the court filing in case you wanted to peruse what is going on.
I would love other people's take on this lawsuit and why it could win and why it could lose. And what exactly does an American Airlines win mean?
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