And it seems to me as though American has a legitimate beef.
From an Associated Press story:
The airline complains that when computer users enter American’s trademark terms such as AAdvantage, the name of its frequent-flier program, in a search they can be directed to competitors who pay Yahoo for the traffic.
American filed its lawsuit last week in U.S. District court in Fort Worth for unspecified damages, legal costs and money to run a “corrective” advertising campaign.
This is apparently an ongoing legal issue in the search-engine world, and I haven’t spent much time noodling it through. But I’m having a difficult time seeing why Yahoo or any other search engine should be able to reap advertising dollars from a transaction whose very design is to exploit a third party’s trademark without paying compensation.
