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DynastyRG
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Google Inc. on Thursday posted a first-quarter profit that beat analysts’ estimates thanks to continued spending by search advertisers and a clampdown on costs, helping bolster the impression that the company is weathering the economic downturn relatively well.
But while Google’s shares rose immediately after the earnings announcement, they turned lower in late trading as investors absorbed news of the company’s first-ever sequential decline in net revenue since it went public, and heard Chief Executive Eric Schmidt acknowledge that he sees no end in sight for the recession.
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DynastyRG
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An Illinois software developer sued some four dozen companies including Google Inc., claiming that they infringed his trademark on the word Android, weekend media reports said.
The Mountain View, Calif., search-engine giantdubbed its mobile-phone operating system Android.
But Erich Specht of Palatine, Ill., and his company, Android Data Corp., said in a complaint that in 2002 he trademarked Android and that the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office in 2008 rejected Google’s request to use the name, reports said.
In the complaint, filed in U.S. District Court in Chicago, Specht is seeking nearly $100 million in damages for trademark infringement, the reports said.
A Google spokesman was quoted as saying the company believes the lawsuit is without merit.
Specht trademarked the name Android for use with e-commerce software in 2002. Google appealed the patent office’s rejection of its request, saying that Specht’s firm had not used the trademark and therefore lost its claim to its use. The patent office rejected Google’s appeals, reports say.
The other defendants are members of the Open Handset Alliance, a group that developed the Android Linux-based mobile platform, the reports say.
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DynastyRG
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Language-training software maker Rosetta Stone Inc. sued Google Inc. on Friday for trademark infringement, the latest in a string of litigation efforts targeting the Internet giant’s use of trademarks in its lucrative search-advertising program.
In a statement, Rosetta Stone said it has filed suit in federal court in Virginia, accusing Google of allowing unrelated entities “including individuals involved in software-piracy operations” to purchase the use of Rosetta Stone trademarks in Google’s AdWords program.
This is a pretty serious matter of copyright infringement. Usually this would be done behind close doors. The fact that it went to court is rather bad I think for Google’s image.
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