Imagine opening a website, keying in a few search terms and presto! You are on the page of a rival website. Users may not mind such an occurrence, but the website in question surely will. That's exactly what happened recently when Consim India, owners of bharatmatrimony.com and indiaproperties.com, petitioned the Madras High Court against Google.com for "infringing on its trademark. In its petition, Consim said Google ads were being used in Bharat Matrimony's platform to sell space to the latter's competitors. For instance, if a user keys in "Tamil matrimony in the Google search field on Bharat Matrimony, the websites thrown up include competitors such as shaadi.com.
According to cyber law expert Pavan Duggal, Google Adwords has been the subject of different litigations in the US as well. The thrust of the subject matter in those cases has been Google's supposed infringement of the trademark of third parties. "In some cases, Google has been able to show that its usage of trademarks in Google Adwords does not constitute any confusion. However, different cases have different facts, says Duggal.
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