Louis Vuitton's Fight Against Google Means Protected Keywords

It seems like the Europeans take Google Adwords very seriously. Louis Vuitton's fight against Google has taken it to the European Justice Court in Luxembourg; which has ruled that the search engine giant Google will have to keep track of the use of trademarked keywords that link back to advertisements on its site.

While the court held that Google did not violate the trademark law when it sold protected keywords, it did say that websites are liable for any trademark violations in the ads if they were aware of it, or had control over the data. This may place an undue burden on Google to monitor its ads.

This ruling in favor of a company defending its trademark in the realm of ad keywords is the first of its kind. Louis Vuitton, which is a part of the luxury company LMVH, will most likely use this ruling in order to battle other websites such as EBay. In fact, Mr. Pierre Gode, vice-president of Paris-based LVMH is quoted by BusinessWeek as saying: LVMH will use the ruling “to show that online referencing services such as Google and EBay do play an active and not a passive role.”

What was Google's response to this decision? According to the Los Angeles Times, the search engine giant Google released the following statement: "This long-awaited decision will be welcomed by the business community as well as by consumers. It confirms and emphasizes the critical role played by trademarks in a dynamic economy to protect innovation and the investments carried out by businesses, and will avoid confusion on behalf of consumers as to the quality of the products and services they are buying."

Do you think that the U.S. courts would rule like this? Hmmm something to think about when you are trolling the internet for that special Louis Vuitton Speedy.