Use of key words may be infringement in US

A federal court in California has held that a legal practice that bought a Google Adword corresponding the name and registered trade mark of a competitor was liable for infringement. The case is  Binder v. Disability Group Inc., C.D. Cal., No. 07-2760 and the story is here (and probably lots of other places too).

Of course, many courts in the US and elsewhere have held that in selling Adwords, Google is not infringing trade mark rights. Like it or not, and I certainly don't that's the legal position. But the advertisers who bid on the Adwords, well, that's another matter - even the Court of Justice has indicated that they might be infringing. The problem is that trade mark owners hoped to get to the root of the problem by stopping Google, and save the trouble of having to pick off lots of troublesome little infringers. So there's not much surprise that the advertisers are infringing, though it's good to have it confirmed, even by a distant (geographically and jurisprudentially) court.