It’s only been a month since a court brought back a lawsuit issue regarding the sales of certain keywords. However Google has received another lawsuit against its practices, this time from a company in Texas. These keywords are not normal everyday words though, they are company names or products such as Pepsi.

So what’s the problem? Google sells the keywords of companies to anyone who bids on them. This means that if Pepsi was the keyword for sale Coke has the opportunity to buy it. The advantage to a company that’s looking to buy these words is that if someone is searching for a particular product or service that they’ll be able to see multiple options and not just that companies’ product line or service.

Firepond is a company that makes sales management software and is suing Google because they feel that their words are an extension of the trademark that they have. They don’t believe that Google should be able to sell their words to other competitors. Google currently will remove any ads that if the ad is negative towards the company or brand however they won’t remove the keywords over a trademark complaint.

Google tries to give users choices that are relevant to the keywords that they are searching and is backing its trademark policy. The current policy is that they will not monitor the use of trademarks in the U.S., Canada, UK, or Ireland. However in many other countries Google has a policy that is very different from the one used in these countries.

The system that is used to sell these words is known as AdWords and is part of Google’s success as anyone can bid on the words to win a top spot on the side of the search results page. There’s no current information as to what the lawsuit might bring upon Google. The only thing that’s known for sure is that Google is currently investigating the complaint made by the company.

Source: CNET