Unhappy With its Google-Search Results, Rosetta Stone Sues Competitor

[WSJ Law Blog]

Try typing “Rosetta Stone” — the name of a language-software company, as well as an Egyptian artifact that helped advance modern understanding of hieroglyphic writing — into your Google search engine. On the right, under “sponsored links,” you’ll see links entitled “Don’t Buy Rosetta Software,” and “Rosetta Spanish a Scam?”

As detailed in this WSJ article by Emily Steel from last month, some of Google’s biggest advertisers are growing angry over “piggybacking,” a practice in which smaller advertisers use the trademarked words of big brands in the text of search ads to divert traffic from the sites of bigger advertisers to their own sites.

Now Rosetta Stone — the company that runs print ads about a small-town boy who must learn Italian in time to impress a model — is taking its gripe to court. But rather than going after Google, Rosetta Stone is suing Rocket Languages (and others), the company that it claims is “piggybacking” its Internet advertising on Rosetta Stone’s name.

In a complaint filed in California federal court, Rosetta Stone alleges that members of an advertising program affiliated with Rocket Languages purchase and use, without authorization, the Rosetta Stone trademark, or confusingly similar variations. Rosetta Stone also alleges that affiliates of Rocket Languages use their Web sites to post “comparison reviews” of Rosetta Stone products and competing foreign language software products, without disclosing that the sources of the reviews are paid by Rocket Languages.

Click here for the complaint, which claims, among other things, federal trademark infringement and dilution, and federal and state unfair competition and false advertising.

Rosetta Stone is repped by Cooley Godward’s Peter Willsey, Nishan Kottahachchi, Brendan Hughes and Benjamin Chapman.

We placed a call to Rocket Languages, and will let you know if we hear back.