Rescuecom Wants It Both Ways Over Keyword Ads; Involved In Two Lawsuits... But On Opposite Sides

from the that-won't-work-well dept

There have been a bunch of silly lawsuits over the use of competitors' trademarked terms being used in ads on Google AdWords. There are a bunch of different legal issues related to those lawsuits, including whether or not Google should be liable for actions of advertisers, whether it's trademark infringement to mention a competitor in an ad, and whether it's trademark infringement just to have an ad triggered on a competitor's trademarked phrase. There's a company called Rescuecom that has been particularly aggressive in these lawsuits, suing Google for a competitor having ads triggered on their trademarks. While a district court rejected that claim, last year an appeals court sent it back to the lower court to try again. And yet... at the same time, it appears that Rescuecom is involved in a lawsuit on the other side with Best Buy. Best Buy claims that Rescuecom is infringing on the "Geek Squad" trademark, and Rescuecom claims that it has a fair use defense... yes for the very same thing it's accusing others of doing. You have to imagine that's going to be pointed out in both of those lawsuits. Some have suggested that Rescuecom doesn't really care either way, and it believes that these lawsuits are a good PR campaign -- which could explain its different view in each lawsuit. If that's the case, it seems like a rather big abuse of the legal system.

Filed Under: keyword ads, trademarks
Companies: best buy, geek squad, google, rescuecom

Geek House Call Services: Expensive, Wrong And Could Be Stealing Your Data

from the the-used-car-salesmen-of-the-computer-world dept

As less tech savvy folks start having computer problems, if they don't have in-house tech support (i.e., kids living at home) they tend to call or visit one of the growing number of computer fixit services -- many of which advertise the fact that they'll come to your home and fix your computer. The problem, though, is that they're pretty expensive, have little training and quite often completely screw up the diagnosis. On top of that, they may snoop around your computer or even download your hard drive. Many people probably suspected this, but when a Canadian TV station put ten such companies to the test with an easy-to-diagnose computer problem only three out of the ten accurately diagnosed the problem -- and then all three charged huge markups on the replacement part to fix it. Six out of the ten got the diagnosis completely wrong and one just gave up (but didn't charge anything either). Many suggested expensive other alternatives -- with a few suggesting that the customer just buy a new computer, even though all the computer really needed was a replacement RAM chip. Then there was the one guy who showed up late, completely misdiagnosed the problem (before he'd even opened the case), told the customer she had to send the computer to a special clean room that would cost $2,000 and then (without getting permission) downloaded the contents of her hard drive to his laptop (which he didn't delete before leaving). The broadcast also interviewed some former technicians who noted that they rarely received much in the way of training, and were often encouraged to charge as much as possible and always be selling other products. The final recommendation from the TV program? Go online, do some research and try to fix things yourself.

Filed Under: computers
Companies: geek squad