• by Wendy Davis , Staff Writer @wendyndavis, March 1, 2011

Rosetta Stone has been battling Google in court since 2009 over the search company's practice of allowing trademarks to trigger search ads. The language learning company argues that its trademark is infringed when other companies use the term as a keyword. Although Rosetta Stone lost the case in the U.S. District Court, it has filed an appeal with the 4th Circuit.

Now, the language learning company is launching an attack on Google on a new front: Rosetta Stone is lobbying lawmakers for new limits on search engines' ability to accept trademarked terms as ads. Rosetta Stone CEO Tom Adams recently testified at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing in favor of the proposed Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act, a controversial anti-piracy bill. The measure would allow the government to shut down domain names that allegedly host sites dedicated to copyright infringement.

In his testimony, Adams said that Rosetta Stone fields complaints every day from consumers who have been duped into purchasing counterfeit software. Adams then went on to say that the "most common way" for counterfeit distributors to reach consumers is by taking out ads on Google and other search engines. "Search engines such as Google misappropriate value created by Rosetta Stone and protected by its federal intellectual property rights by selling Rosetta Stone's trademarks as advertising 'keywords' to counterfeiters who operate the 'rogue' websites," Adams said in his written testimony. "When a consumer looking to purchase a Rosetta Stone product searches on Google for 'Rosetta Stone,' the resulting search results page will include not only links to Rosetta Stone's official website, but also paid ads linking to 'rogue' websites.

Adams urged lawmakers to give the Department of Justice the authority "to prevent 'rogue' websites from using search engines as their gateway to American consumers."