The lunacy continues. Last week the judge in Geico's trademark infringement case against Google and Yahoo!'s Overture dismissed pleas to dismiss charges, green-lighting the case for an eventual trial. One can only hope that sanity will prevail in the trial. Geico does not own search result pages, nor does any company that appears in search result lists. Geico's complaint that advertisers (in Overture's pay-per-click program and Google's similar AdWords program) infringe Geico's trademark by appearing on search result pages listing the Geico site might better be directed specifically to the advertisers, but more sensibly should be simply dropped. Should not Tide appear next to Cheer on the supermarket shelf? Should an ad for one plumber not appear next to an ad for another plumber in my local paper? Get a life, Geico.
