Google has successfully sued Bloosky, Just Think Media, Crush, Hyper Interactive, Search 4 Profit, and Viable to the tune of $1,600,000. These companies were using Google’s name in it’s products & many of their customers wrote directly to Google complaining about the product thinking it was actually Google themselves who had sold the product to them.
Not only do these companies have to fork over $1.6 Million but they are now forbidden from:
“using in any manner the term GOOGLE, any of Plaintiff’s Google Marks, or any terms phonetically or confusingly similar thereto in connection with the marketing, selling, offering for sale, displaying, promoting or advertising of work-at-home business opportunities, work-at-home products, and/or work-at-home services.”
While I am very much an advocate of free speech & a free internet personally I am very happy with this ruling because these businesses essentially impersonated the Google brand & used the brands value to sell terrible products to unsuspecting people. As mentioned above many of the people who purchased the product actually taught it was Google who had sold it to them.
Some more articles about this topic: Wall Street Journal - Web Pro News
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