American Airlines® sue Google over Adwords

[mutley 4,498]

Now I can see why Just Flight didn't use AA® livery as part of Traffic

American® complains that competitor keyword bidding and the ad display associated with the keywords are tantamount to getting a "free ride on American Airlines®' brands through use of Google's technology," and that Google is guilty of "vicarious trademark infringement."

American's® argument is, shall we say, multi-faceted. On one level, the airline claims that Google is "directly" infringing its trademarks, that the search engine is using intellectual property owned by American Airlines® to rake in cold, hard cash

http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2007/ ... e-to-court

Now everytime anyone mentions the A® word here be sure to add ®, cheers

:mrhappy:

[MartinW 0]

Pathetic if you ask me Mut!

Apparently Gulfstream are very hot on this nonsense and that’s the main reason you don't see any Gulfstream add-ons for FS. They have threatened to sue the pants off anyone that does.

Utterly pathetic!

On the other hand you have ATR who are willing to team up with F1 and develop the AATR for FS.

P.S. I've got used to the new forum colours now Mut! :mrhappy:

[mutley 4,498]

I agree Martin, any lost revenue must be a drop in the ocean to them. I think Coca Cola have the same policy.

Glad you like the forum colours now, it's very calming I reckon :mrhappy:

Cheers

[JF_Rich 1]

This type of thing is becoming all the more common these days. Lots, if not all companies and organisations we come into contact with now employ a dedicated agent tasked with the job of maximising the revenue that can be squeezed out of assets such as image rights etc. Nothing wrong with this of course and in a lot of cases it actually makes things easier for us to get a licence as in the case of the RAF and their agent 4Kids (no idea why its called that). Unfortunately you have certain companies that have no interest in playing ball and seem to go out of their way to make things as difficult as possible.

It's not just FS'ers that are being targeted by these companies. If you sell paintings or photographs of RAF aircraft for example then you need to be wary of 4Kids coming knocking on your door demanding a royalty based on the fact you are profiting off of the likenesses of RAF property.

[mutley 4,498]

:mrhappy: Welcome back Rich.

As users of flight sim software I think we have become very used to freeware and benefiting from others peoples work. I wonder if AA would go after these freeware developers too? That would massacre the market and we would all have to go "underground" :sad:

Ohh look at the time, back to work. Grrr

Cheers

[JF_Rich 1]

That is exactly what happened before. Not altogether AA's fault though. A certain FS publisher with less than scrupulous morals managed to sign up an exclusive arrangement with AA and then proceeded to send cease and desist warning to any freeware devs how were using anything to do with AA. It didn't go down very well!

You may have read this before but it still makes an interesting read - http://www.avsim.com/pages/0902/pt_again.html

[dgor 0]

Very interesting read indeed Rich. As the world's biggest airline AA® liveries for MSFS aircraft are very popular, any legal action taken against them (either by PT in that article or the airline in discussion) would be devastating. Welcome to the forum by the way :-)

*goes off to check keywords in Vertigo video*

Dave

[Airbus 0]

I cant believe that. Thats over the top i think. But its all about Money Money Money