A U.S. District Court Judge handed online marketer WhenU its second legal victory in recent months, denying another company's request to have it stop distributing its ad-serving desktop software. The 66-page decision, handed down Wednesday morning by Judge Nancy G. Edmunds of the Eastern District of Michigan, denied a request by Wells Fargo and Quicken Loans for a preliminary injunction against WhenU. The companies wanted WhenU to stop serving ads for competing loan and other financial services while desktop software owners were on the Wells Fargo site. Testimony in the case had been heard over the summer in Detroit. Edmunds found that WhenU's software, which downloads an ad-server when users request its software, doesn't infringe on Wells Fargo's trademarks. The pop-ups are identified as WhenU's and don't have to do with Wells Fargo at all, the judge said. Although the injunction was denied, it's unclear what bearing this decision will have on the case against WhenU. Wells Fargo and Quicken Loans couldn't be reached for comment Wednesday afternoon. It was WhenU's second favorable ruling since September, when U.S. District Judge Gerald Bruce Lee ruled that WhenU's advertising techniques - including but not limited to pop-ups - don't violate trademark laws. The suit had been brought against WhenU by U-Haul, which complained that its customers would be confused with WhenU content on the screen while they were interacting with U-Haul's Web site. The judge in the U-Haul case ruled that even when the pop-ups cover or appear next to content from other Web sites, they aren't violating trademark laws. A U-Haul spokeswoman told MediaDailyNews on Wednesday afternoon that it was preparing an appeal, with the next court date in January to determine the appeal process. She said U-Haul's attorney in the case had seen the Wells Fargo decision. "He does not think it will have any effect on the U-Haul case," the spokeswoman said. The judge in the Wells Fargo/Quicken Loans case went even further than the justice in the U-Haul case, Wednesday, dismissing a key part of Wells Fargo's argument. "Plaintiffs have failed to come forward with concrete evidence of even a single customer or potential customer who failed to purchase products or services from them because of WhenU," Edmunds wrote in her decision. In fact, Edmunds said that Quicken Loans had benefited from traffic driven to its parent company Intuit by a sibling unit, Turbo Tax, which uses WhenU to advertise. At the same time, Edmunds said that the only company that would be harmed by an injunction would be WhenU, which she said would lose millions in revenue, even if the case was eventually settled in WhenU's favor. Several advertisers, including American Express, Bank of America and General Motors, have dropped WhenU campaigns due to concerns about litigation. "A preliminary injunction could also chill the efforts of other companies seeking to develop forms of 'push technology' - technology that delivers information to the desktop without need for consumers to make an active request each time they see the information," Edmunds wrote. Avi Naider, chief executive officer of New York-based WhenU, said Wednesday afternoon that it's incorrect to think of this case as solely about pop-ups. He said that through WhenU's desktop software application, Save Now, it's not only pop-ups that are served but also a variety of other formats, including banners and text links. He said that the pop-ups have been shown to work, offering advertisers targeting with "100 percent client privacy protection and infinite flexibility." WhenU's advertisers include J.P. Morgan Chase, Panasonic, Cingular and Kraft Foods. He said that WhenU's approach is to deliver relevant messages based on consumers' interests. "It's only shown to customers that have expressed interest," Naider said. "The opportunity for desktop advertising in principle is tremendous, and WhenU believes very, very strongly that it is going to be a large part of the future of Internet advertising."
In a deal likely to accelerate the movement toward multimedia search, AOL Wednesday said it agreed to acquire Singingfish.com, an audio/video search services company that scours the net for downloadable multimedia in RealMedia, Windows Media, QuickTime and other mp3 formats. In a related move, AOL said it was launching new audio and video search capabilities for its AOL Search service for AOL and AOL for Broadband users. By buying Singingfish, AOL immediately becomes the leader in the burgeoning field of audio and video search. A spokesman for the company said the new integrated audio and video features will make it easier for members to find streaming audio and video content from across the Web as well as on-demand and exclusive media content, by utilizing Singingfish's index of 45 million music and video files. Chris Sherman, an analyst with SearchEngineWatch.com, believes AOL acquired Singingfish to keep rivals Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft from snatching it first. He speculated that a paid downloading service of video and audio files might be on the horizon: "This could be the prelude to AOL offering a multimedia download service," he said. Coincidentally, Singingfish also powers the search engines for Microsoft's WindowsMedia.com and RealNetwork's RealOne paid online service. These partnerships are scheduled to continue in spite of the Singingfish's AOL acquisition. AOL's search efforts could be crucial to getting more and more Web users engaged in multimedia content, especially since search is the No. 2 online activity after email and already the starting point for so many users' Web experiences. Search is also becoming an increasingly important source of revenue for both advertisers and publishers. AOL says it plans to charge companies for guaranteed inclusion in its multimedia search just as Singingfish currently does with its other products. "AOL feels there is evidence that paid inclusion enhances search results without detracting from the user's experience," notes Singingfish's Michele Large´, but adds that, while it has not been entirely discounted yet, there are no plans to incorporate paid placement. "As part of the way (the search engine) delivers results, relevancy is more important than placement," she said, noting that AOL is still "taking a look at that." Regarding the opportunity for growth the AOL acquisition provides Singingfish and multimedia search in general, Large´ mentions the breadth and depth of the AOL multimedia proposition, adding that through all their properties they have so much rich content that she sees the partnership yielding a veritable landscape of opportunity. "If nothing else," Large´ continues, "AOL's intent shows that audio/video search is relevant now; its no longer just an up and coming idea if such an organization sees the urgency in developing it further."
Cable channel College Sports Television (CSTV) announced Wednesday that it will acquire the Official College Sports Network, an Internet provider of collegiate sports news and information. CSTV will pay $7 million for the Official College Sports Network, including $2.85 million in cash and the rest in assumption of debt. The online service's current owner is Student Advantage Inc., a publicly traded company that markets discount cards for college students at more than 15,000 locations worldwide under the name The Student Advantage Discount Card. Official College Sports Network is only part of the company, which had revenues of $4.74 million in the quarter ended Sept. 30 and a deficit of more than $128 million. For CSTV, it opens up a second front in its strategy to be a top player in collegiate sports news and information. The Official College Sports Network owns CollegeSports.com, which Nielsen//Net Ratings calls the top Web site devoted to intercollegiate athletics. The seven-year-old unit also builds and maintains sites for more than 135 college athletic departments, conferences and athletic associations, including more than half of NCAA Division I-A schools like Ohio State University, Notre Dame and Florida State University. It has more than 325 advertisers, including American Express, EA Sports, Forbes and Microsoft. Brian Bedol, president and chief executive officer of CSTV, said the acquisition gives the cable TV channel "a single, strong entity" across television and the Internet. He said that CSTV and its new online property was getting in near the ground floor of a transition in the distribution of sports to consumers, from vertical means like league-owned networks and channels designated for single sports to multiple platforms. "With this marriage [between CSTV and Official College Sports Network], we will have the opportunity to reach new schools and new sponsors," Bedol said Wednesday afternoon. That digital future Bedol referred to is being hastened by the nation's move to broadband. Official College Sports Network, in a deal with Real Networks, already provides live coverage of some games that President Jeff Cravens said didn't have enough room on the television dial for them. While CSTV was short on specifics, it said that the future was virtually unlimited with a broadband platform. "I think you will see us, over the next couple of months, begin to test some of that content delivery. I think that, especially in partnership with some of the major cable companies and satellite providers that have broadband service, they are anxious to see us provide some compelling sports content on there that helps add value to what we're doing in broadband," Bedol said. "I think you'll see it soon." In the TV world, CSTV has been making strides on both satellite and cable. It's available to 15 million homes on Adelphia, Insight and other cable systems and DirecTV.