Google Being Sued By Montblanc For Misleading Adverts

Montblanc, a German manufacturer of watches, writing instruments and other accessories is going to meet Google in court over the identity of counterfeiters that have been using the AdWords program.

Court documents offering some insight on the lawsuit show that search terms like ’Montblanc pens’ produce misleading adverts that appear on Google.co.uk. The UK arm was unable to identify the offending advertisers, stating they don’t have the information and told Montblanc to take the case up with Google US. Montblanc has stated they tried to determine the identity of the offenders through other avenues and have not had any success. Because their identity is in the exclusive possession of Google, Monteblanc has no other choice but to demand release of the information through a lawsuit.

Montblanc has received numerous complaints from clients who have clicked on links from the search engine and were deceived by imitated sites. Montblanc is wanting the counterfeiters information to pursue a copyright infringement lawsuit that would be filed as soon as they received the information. Google operates a 24hr complaints policy and has said that bad ads effect their reputation just as much as the product manufacturer’s