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[Post by Venkat]

Jagex Ltd. v. Impulse Software, et al., Case No. 10-10216-NMG (D. Mass.) (Aug. 16, 2010)

Jagex operates “Runescape,” a popular and free online role-playing game. The game has over 130 million accounts, and users spend a significant amount of time “rising through the levels of the game”:

as of October, 2009, the three highest-ranking players had each spent an average of approximately 20,000 hours [!] involved in a game, e.g., 50 hours per week for almost eight years.

Impulse (along with the individual defendants) operate websites offering “cheat” tools - i.e., software that allows users to advance their characters without actually playing the game. Defendants’ software downloads a copy of Runescape and “uses a process called ‘reflection’ to examine the game’s internal operation which is normally hidden from users.” The software then “plays the game for its owner while she is away from her computer.”

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The content in this post was found at http://blogmosaic.knowledgemosaic.com/2010/08/15/foley-lardner-update-court-upholds-google-sale-of-trademarks-as-keywords/ and was not authored by the moderators of freeforafee.com. Clicking the title link will take you to the source of the post.

By Eric Goldman

After the ECJ’s favorable opinion in the Google cases, I’ve been wondering if Google would liberalize its trademark policy in Europe. It took Google 4 months to parse the ECJ’s inscrutable opinion and make a call, but it finally decided that the opinion was favorable enough to support liberalization.

After the changed European policy (starting Sept. 14), Google will have a virtually uniform world-wide policy not to block bids on trademarked keywords at the trademark owner’s request. Google will block trademark references in ad copy at the trademark owner’s request, but this will be subject to regional differences. In the US and (starting Sept. 14) UK, Ireland and Canada, Google will not block TM references in ad copy for resellers, complementary product sellers and information sites. In the EU and some related countries (EFTA), Google’s new policy will be to review ads on an ad-by-ad basis as follows:

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Advertisers in Europe will soon be able to buy other companies’ trademarked terms using Google AdWords. Google announced Wednesday that it was changing its AdWords policy in Europe to align more closely with its policies elsewhere, meaning that a trademark owner won’t be able to lay claim over all ads that use the same words.

The content in this post was found at http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2010/08/google-to-sell-trademarked-adwords-in-europe-like-us.ars?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=rss and was not authored by the moderators of freeforafee.com. Clicking the title link will take you to the source of the post.