Google's Amended SEC Filing Discusses Overture Lawsuit

Google has amended its SEC filings and has commented on Yahoo’s Overture patent infringement suit. (U.S. Patent 6,269,361).

Overture Services (now owned by Yahoo) has sued the [Google], claiming that the Google AdWords program infringes certain claims of an Overture Services patent. It also claims that the patent relates to an Overture Services own bid-for-ad placement business model and its pay-for-performance technologies. The Company is currently litigating this case. If Overture Services wins, it may significantly limit the Company’s ability to use the AdWords program, and the Company also may be required to pay damages.

Google plans to continue to “rigorously defend this lawsuit.”

Overture’s patent, filed in 1999, covers a “system and method for influencing a position on a search result list generated by a computer network search engine."

Martin Schwimmer discusses Google's potential trademark problems here. If "googling" becomes a generic term, then it would lose its power as a trademark.