Interflora sues M&S over Google keywords

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The world's largest flower delivery firm has sued Marks and Spencer at the High Court in London for sponsoring the word 'Interflora' as a search engine keyword. The case could be an important test of how UK trade mark laws apply to keyword advertising.



Michigan-based Interflora and its UK trading arm are seeking an unspecified sum of damages and a court injunction to stop M&S bidding on its brand name. Interflora says that the British retailer has taken unfair advantage of Interflora's brand, in breach of trade mark law.


The lawsuit names Flowers Direct Online as a second defendant. The company, based in Morecambe, England, runs a flower delivery service from flowersdirect.co.uk.


In the lawsuit filed yesterday, M&S and Flowers Direct are accused of bidding for the words 'Interflora' and misspellings such as 'Intaflora' and 'Inter-flora' in Google's AdWords programme. When users searched for these terms, adverts for M&S and Flowers Direct appeared as 'sponsored links'.


Google used to work with brand owners to stop their trade marks being used by others as keywords. Controversially, it changed its policy on 5th May 2008. Now almost any word is available for sponsorship, though Google's policies still control the text of adverts that the keywords trigger.
According to the lawsuit, "when a user enters the search term INTERFLORA or similar into the Google search engine, it is the intention of that user to look for [Interflora or its associates]."


The case argues that sections 10(1) and 10(3) of the Trade Marks Act 1994 are being breached by M&S and Flowers Direct.


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