Rosetta Stone Inc. has agreed to drop its trademark infringement lawsuit against Google for allegedly selling its trademarks to other companies for search-engine advertising.
The companies agreed all claims in the infringement case would be dismissed, an Oct. 31 filing in federal court in Alexandria, Virginia indicated. The terms of the settlement were not released.
“Rosetta Stone Inc and Google have agreed to dismiss the three-year-old trademark infringement lawsuit between them and to meaningfully collaborate to combat online ads for counterfeit goods and prevent the misuse and abuse of trademarks on the Internet,” the companies announced in a joint statement.
“The companies will also work together to help law enforcement officials around the world go after counterfeiters at the source. By working together, Google and Rosetta Stone hope to improve detection methods, and better protect from abuse brands like Rosetta Stone, advertising platforms like Google AdWords, and ultimately consumers on the Internet At the end of the day, both companies would rather cooperate than litigate, and we believe this agreement is an important step toward eliminating piracy and trademark abuse on the Internet.”
The lawsuit, filed in 2009, alleged Google perpetrated trademark infringement by selling Rosetta Stone’s trademarks to other advertisers to be used as search keywords, news reports said.
Rosetta Stone said in its lawsuit that those who sought its products on Google were directed to competitors and software counterfeiters.
Although a federal court in Virginia dismissed the case in 2010, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit, in Richmond, Virginia, reinstituted the majority of the lawsuit in April.
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Sounds like a commonsense outcome, will it apply to all adwords keywords that are presumed trademark or copyright ?