Another lawsuit is sitting on the doorsteps of Yahoo and Google. This one, which actually has been in play for almost a month, claims both companies (Overture is actually one of the named defendants, but since they are owned by Yahoo it is all the same in the end) have been unlawfully using a registered pet store name trademark to sell advertising.

Pet store owner Robert Novak claimed in the suit that he owned the trademark to the term "Pets Warehouse" and that Google, Kanoodle and Overture—which is owned by Yahoo—illegally sold advertising tied to that phrase. The search companies argued that the phrase was generic. But the judge said that without more information, he could not "conclude as a matter of law that the registered mark is generic."

The lawsuit, which the search companies had originally asked be tossed out of court, is now set to continue forward though its future seems clouded. According to ZDNet, Novak actually lost the rights to the PetsWarehouse.com domain name last year after he filed for bankruptcy.

The situation gets stranger though because this is only one of several lawsuits Novak as recently filed - highlights of all of them are found on the current petswarehouse.com site, which until last week had been owned by a lawyer retained by one of Novak's targets.

Novak, who is reportedly representing himself, has not made friends with the judge presiding over the case:

In the current case involving search engines, the judge did side with Google in one area. Novak claimed Google was guilty of "tortious interference with prospective business relations," a claim that Hurley said was nonsense.

Novak, who has been representing himself in this and other lawsuits, drew some criticism from the judge for legal filings that are "not a model of clarity." Novak submitted a "confusing response" to Google's request to have the case tossed out, Hurley wrote.