When American Airlines sued Google over trademark policy back in 2007, the case received a lot of attention. The settlement of the two companies may have received even more notice since the terms remain confidential. Legal scholars such as Sarah Bird and Clarke Walton were drawn to this case because they were hoping to find out if trademark policy is truly a legal and viable business model.

To briefly summarize the case, American Airlines accused Google of infringing upon its trademarks by using them as keyword targets for paid ads from other airline companies. Essentially, when a user searched for “American Airlines” in a Google search, the user was then redirected to the site of an American Airlines competitor. (Clarification: When a user searched for “American Airlines” in Google, paid advertisements and organic results would show up. Some of these paid ads and organic results were from the competitors of American Airlines who chose “American Airlines” as a keyword phrase. The searcher could then be led to believe that the competitor was either affiliated with American Airlines or superior to American Airlines.)

In July of 2008, the companies settled the lawsuit. As mentioned above, the terms remain classified so there is no real winner that we know of. Incidentally, several companies have sued Google over trademark infringement, but American Airlines is the first well-known trademark owner to take action.

In this video, Clarke speculates that Google has a policy that it implements for most all businesses, but for recognized brands like American Airlines, the giant search company may make exceptions to its policy. He takes it one step further and says there is a possibility that in cases such as this, companies create their own policy through a confidential settlement.

Clarke also guesses that if a user conducts a Google search for “American Airlines” today, competitor’s ads will not show up. Interestingly enough, I did a Google search for “American Airlines” and no ads showed up.