THE DELHI HIGH court on Thursday ruled that Google's use of trademarks as keywords under its Ads Programme may lead to infringement, making it ineligible for safe harbour status.
This means that Google will be legally bound if advertisers use another company's trademark to improve their search ranking and that affects the trademark owner or confuses consumers. Besides, the ruling could affect Google's advertising revenue, experts said.
Being an intermediary, the tech giant enjoys legal immunity under Section 79 of the IT Act from actions of third-party companies on its platforms. However, the court said Google is the provider of the keywords and an active participant in the use of trademarks. Besides, it also selects the recipients of the information that were infringing links, and hence the safe harbour status will not be applicable, the court said.
The court was pronouncing its judgment in the Google LLC vs DRS Logistics case, in which the latter said its trademark'Agarwal Packers and Movers' has been used by Google in its keywords. It is now being used by competitors to generate traffic on their websites, the logistics company argued.
This story is from the August 12, 2023 edition of Financial Express Mumbai.
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This story is from the August 12, 2023 edition of Financial Express Mumbai.
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