Google Blogs Response To Geico Ruling

Apparently, the ability to make lemons into lemonade is one of Google's strong points, or it could be they are living by the whole "beauty is in the eye of the beholder" thing. In response to a court ruling concerning trademark infringement of auto insurance company Geico, a ruling that many stated went against the search engine, the trademark policy and how Geico felt they were infringed upon. Geico felt their trademark was being misrepresented when Google would allow other advertisers to use the words "Geico" and "Geico Direct" in the AdWords text creative. According to a issued a post explaining Google's position on the ruling. First off, Drummond feels those who are calling the ruling as being against ruling are doing so erroneously. Google feels like the ruling against the use of trademarked terms in ad text is of little significance. Because of Google's trademark policy, which calls for ad copy removal if it using trademarked terms, provided the owner of the trademark issues a complaint, they feel the second ruling did not affect them as much as the first ruling did (the first ruling dealt with keyword queries generating competitor ads). Drummond ended his post by acknowledging there may be AdWords policy changes on the horizon:

Finally, even though we believe our current policy strikes a good balance between advertisers, users and trademark owners, don't be surprised if our policy evolves over time. We believe it is possible for an advertiser to create an ad that uses a trademark in a legal and non-confusing way - after all that is what comparative advertising is all about.