• by Wendy Davis  @wendyndavis, July 3, 2009

For the fifth time since May, Google has been sued for trademark infringement on AdWords.

Like other recent cases, this lawsuit, brought by computer software company Ascentive, alleges that Google wrongly allowed other companies to use Ascentive's trademarks to trigger pay-per-click search ads. But this latest action has an additional wrinkle: Ascentive also alleges that Google wrongly removed the company from the organic results listings.

Ascentive sells a variety of software programs, ranging from anti-spyware software like "Spyware Striker Pro" to monitoring programs like BeAware (which is sold through Ascentive's main site as well as the site "Catching Your Cheating Spouse").

In its lawsuit, filed in federal district court in the eastern district of Pennsylvania, the company alleges it owns the trademarks on a host of terms including FinallyFast.com, FastAtLast.com and Spyware Striker.

Ascentive complains that Google allows rivals to purchase terms like Finally Fast as keywords that triggered ads for their sites. "Google's unauthorized and willful use and sale of Ascentive's trademarks in connection with its advertising programs ... is likely to cause confusion, mistake or deception as to the source of the goods and services offered," Ascentive alleges.

Google takes the position that letting trademarks serve as keywords is a consumer-friendly move. "We allow trademarks to be used as keyword triggers in AdWords because users searching on Google benefit from being able to choose from a variety of competing advertisers," the company said in a statement.

While a number of marketers have brought AdWords-related trademark infringement claims against Google, none of those lawsuits have definitively succeeded in court. Only one case has gone to trial so far -- a lawsuit by insurance company Geico. In that case, U.S. District Court Judge Leonie Brinkema in Virginia ruled that Geico had not proven its claim of trademark infringement because it had not shown that people were confused when its name triggered ads for rivals.

Ascentive also alleges that Google removed the Ascentive site FinallyFast.com from the organic search results earlier this year. The company says that traffic then plummeted to around 500,000 visitors a month, from 1.9 million in January. "Prospective customers' ability to find Ascentive's Web sites was so impaired that many of Ascentive's marketing efforts became uneconomical," the company alleges.

A Google spokesperson said he couldn't comment on the specifics of Ascentive's case, but that sites in general might be blocked if they do not meet the standards outlined in the company's Webmaster Guidelines.

Google has prevailed in at least one other lawsuit where a company complained that it was wrongly removed from the organic search results. In that case, directory and search engine KinderStart.com unsuccessfully sued Google after it stopped showing KinderStart's site in the results.

Not only did a federal district court judge in California toss the case, but the judge ordered KinderStart's attorney to pay $7,500 in sanctions for having brought the action.