Law.com yesterday highlighted the keyword lawsuits against Google — and Google’s recent success in defending them.
Blogger Eric Goldman thinks the suits may be ill-fated. “We’re starting to see some of these lawsuits crack,” he said. “My current hypothesis is that they never made sense in the first place — the plaintiffs got all excited to go take down Google, but suing Google is a loser’s bet because Google’s going to fight to the death.”
I agree that Google’s going to fight to the death, though I’m not sure anyone’s excited at the prospect of starting that fight. Proving trademark infringement can be hard enough. When doing so challenges the very model on which Google depends? That’s a suit a rational plaintiff would take on only if it thought it had no other choice.
So do Google plaintiffs have no other choice? I don’t think so. Seems to me they could get all the relief they need by suing the competitor that’s buying their trademarks.