A US federal court has ruled that an ‘AdWords’-like use of trademarks in an online retailer’s search engine does not constitute infringement.

As Schiff Hardin reports, Amazon is one of many online retailers that uses an internal search engine that sorts through branded and trademarked goods. Amazon was sued for trademark infringement by Multi Time Machine, Inc. (MTM) because when a consumer searched the site for “MTM special ops”, the Amazon search results delivered a collection of watches sold by MTM’s competitors.

The court in Multi Time Machine, Inc. v Amazon.com granted Amazon summary judgment. It found that no reasonable trier of fact could find a likelihood of confusion resulting from this “use” of the MTM trademark in generating the search results.

This decision reinforces the trend set by the Ninth Circuit in Network Automation, Inc. v. Advanced Systems Concepts, Inc., which cautioned that courts must be “acutely aware of excessive rigidity when applying the law in the Internet context; emerging technologies require a flexible approach”.