Competitor Isn’t Responsible for Google Knowledge Panel’s Contents–International Star Registry v. RGIFTS

This lawsuit involves competitors in the “star registry” niche . The incumbent is the International Star Registry of Illinois. The challenger is RGIFTS. The incumbent doesn’t like the competition and is clinging to its very descriptive trademarks to try to shut down the challenger.

The court discusses the Google Knowledge Panel, which bore “the name of RGIFTS that describes its services as backed by the ‘International Star Registry.” The court credits RGIFTS’ claims that it had no involvement in creating Google’s Knowledge Panel. For more on how intermediaries construct consumer associations that may have trademark infringement implications, see my Brand Spillovers paper.

The court also discusses RGIFTS’ keyword ad purchases in Google and Bing. The court credited RGIFTS’ claim that the ads are showing up on the incumbent’s purported trademarks due to “keyword insertion,” i.e., the search engines are displaying the ads on synonyms and other words associated with the purchased keywords.

The court says these activities “were generated by search engines that were not within RGIFTS’ control….these three advertisements are not new and escalating conduct at the hands of RGIFTS.” Injunction denied.

Case Citation: International Star Registry of Illinois, Ltd v. RGIFTS Limited, 2024 WL 3398333 (N.D. Ill. July 12, 2024).

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BONUS with respect to knowledge panels:

The plaintiff Trenton Rogers Garmon claimed Google subjects white American Christian men to “systematic algorithm defamation.” As evidence of this, “Google News exclusively lists bad news stories, an unflattering photo, and incorrect martial information” on his vanity searches, while Yahoo, DuckDuckGo, and Bing show some flattering information. The court says there’s no defamation when “Google links articles written by other entities that report negative events in Garmon’s life that actually happened.”

Regarding the knowledge panels:

Garmon alleges that Google’s Knowledge Panel falsely claims he is married, rather than divorced and seeking annulment. But Count I focuses solely on the algorithm that produces search results in Google News, not the Knowledge Panel, so this false fact is not relevant to Count I. Plus, the court questions whether being wrongly listed as married is defamatory under Alabama law…(The court notes that, at the time of this opinion, Google appears to have removed Garmon’s marital status from the Knowledge Panel.).

Garmon v. Google LLC, 2024 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 110684 (N.D. Ala. June 24, 2024).

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