A joint statement by the companies mentioned, “Rosetta Stone Inc and Google have agreed to dismiss the three-year-old trademark infringement lawsuit between them and to meaningfully collaborate to combat online ads for counterfeit goods and prevent the misuse and abuse of trademarks on the Internet.”
Rosetta Stone had alleged in the lawsuit that people searching for its products were being redirected by Google to competitors by selling its trademarks to those competitors for use as search keywords.
The case had been dismissed by a federal court in Virginia in 2010, however, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit had reinstated the bulk of the lawsuit in April, and allowed Rosetta Stone to pursue the claims of trademark infringement and brand dilution.
Consumers testified in court that they had purchased bogus software thinking it was from Rosetta Stone, by clicking on sponsored links using Rosetta Stone’s trademark name, and that they mistook such products as the genuine brand. In the matter, the 4th Circuit also cited a Google internal study that mentioned that even sophisticated consumers were failed to detect in many cases that sponsored links were advertisements.
The case is Rosetta Stone Ltd v. Google Inc, U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, No. 09-736.