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Yahoo Sued By American Airlines over Trade Mark Search Terms
American Airlines (“AA”) has filed suit against Yahoo Inc. over the search provider’s use of AA’s trade-marks such as “AAdvantage” and “American Airline”. AA’s complaint against these search engines is that, when users search for AA’s trade-marks, they are presented with links to competitors who pay the search engines for directing people to their websites. Yahoo takes the position that its trade-mark policy, which allows advertisers to use another’s trade-marked terms if it does so "without creating a likelihood of consumer confusion”, is correct and defensible.
Earlier this year, AA settled a similar claim against Google Inc. While the terms of the settlement with Google have not been disclosed, it is clear that searches for AA’s trade-marks on Google’s portal no longer produces ads on the right side of the search results screen.
For additional information, visit:
http://tech.yahoo.com/news/ap/20081021/ap_on_hi_te/american_airlines_yahoo