First, Google's general counsel spun a victory claim—in the Google blog, of all places. Now GEICO's attorney Charles Davies is claiming a win for his side in the distinctly neutral ruling delivered by Judge Brinkema. Davies is quoted making two statement, both of which are probably wrong: "The written decision leaves open the issue of whether the sale and use of trademarks by search engines and advertisers to trigger ads that do not contain other parties' trademarks violates the law." Wrong. Brinkema previously issued a summary judgment throwing out GEICO's claim of consumer confusion when ads were triggered by trademarked keywords. Her current decision pertains to trademarks appearing in the text of those ads—a completely different issue. Davies seems to be ignoring that difference. "[GEICO will] aggressively enforce its trademark rights against purchasers of its trademarks on search engines and against search engines that sell Geico's trademarks to advertisers." Again, selling trademarks to advertisers (allowing advertisers to trigger ads with trademarked keywords) is no longer an issue. Brinkema took that complaint out of the case.

So both sides are spinning victory out of nothing. There are no winners at this stage: Brinkema has instructed the two sides to settle, which probably won't happen since Google does not acknowledge any responsibility for advertisers using trademarks in ad text. No winners and one loser—that would be Judge Brinkema, for not redirecting GEICO's complaint to individual advertisers. The search company should be removed from the complaint.