Husband Sues Google For Patent Infringement; Wife Sues Google For Trademark Infringement

from the money-money-money-money dept

On Friday, we mentioned in passing that a class action lawsuit had been filed against Google, claiming that its allowance of trademarked terms to be used in keyword advertising was an abuse of trademark law. Eric Goldman had an interesting analysis of the case, noting that it was the first such attempt to create a class action lawsuit around this issue. As we've discussed, such lawsuits don't make much sense. First, there's no violation of trademark in running an ad against a trademarked keyword (there's no confusion by the user and there's no dilution of the mark). Second, even if there is trademark infringement, the infringer would be the company taking out the ad, not Google. But why let that stop a chance to score millions from Google.

When I saw the NY Times coverage of the lawsuit, it caught my attention that the woman behind the lawsuit was named Audrey Spangenberg, because it reminded me of Erich Spangenberg, a rather notorious patent hoarder who has made millions producing nothing, but suing an awful lot. This is the same Erich Spangenberg who had to pay $4 million after he was caught shuffling patents around among his many different shell companies, so that he could sue Chrysler three times over the same patent, despite earlier settlements promising never to use the same patent against Chrysler again.

Still, I figured it must be a coincidence -- surely, there must be a fair number of Spangenbergs in the world. However, Joe Mullin, IP reporter extraordinaire, has a detailed post explaining that the two are, in fact, married, and also detailing how Erich Spangenberg has sued Google multiple times for patent infringement. Apparently, the family is branching out into questionable trademark lawsuits as well. Audrey Spangenberg claims (don't they always?) that the lawsuit is about "respect for intellectual property" rather than money. So, I'm sure that she'll gladly donate any money she and her husband make from all these lawsuits to groups that respect intellectual property, such as Creative Commons, EFF or the Free Software Foundation, right?

Filed Under: audrey spangenberg, erich spangenberg, patents, trademarks
Companies: firepond, google, plutus ip