• Reuters, Tuesday, September 4, 2007 10:45 AM

American Blind & Wallpaper, one of the original companies to sue Google for its business practices, has dropped its case accusing Google of inciting trademark infringement through its Google AdWords program. The suit was filed in 2003 and was scheduled to go to trial in the U.S. District Court for Northern California in November. Legal analysts commonly believed that American Blind had no chance in this suit.

"After almost four years of litigation, the American Blinds lawsuit ended today with a stunning victory for Google," wrote Eric Goldman, an assistant professor at Santa Clara University School of Law, on his legal blog. The settlement is one of many U.S. lawsuits where Google has successfully defended the practice of allowing companies to bid on competitors' trademarks; however, the search giant has lost similar cases in Europe.

In the settlement, neither Google nor American Blind accepted any wrongdoing; the parties will pay their respective legal costs. That means Google is paying nothing to American Blind and won't be changing its policies, either. The wallpaper reseller agreed not to sue Google again or aid other parties in suing Google unless the search giant makes a change to its AdWords trademark policy.

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