Monday, May 30, 2005
Local Targeting Gets Ugly
Former partners squabbling in court, and Google loses round against Digital Envoy:
As reported in CNET, the district court in Northern California has ruled that the lawsuit by geo-location specialist Digital Envoy accusing Google of misappropriating trade secrets may proceed.
The two companies had a licensing agreement as far back as 2000 that relied on Digital's IP technology to pinpoint the physical location of Web visitors for Google so that it could better serve sponsored search results. (The parties no longer work together.) Digital balked when in 2003, Google broadened use of the geo-location technology to include serving targeted advertisements onto third-party sites in a program called Google AdSense.
Ouch.
As reported in CNET, the district court in Northern California has ruled that the lawsuit by geo-location specialist Digital Envoy accusing Google of misappropriating trade secrets may proceed.
The two companies had a licensing agreement as far back as 2000 that relied on Digital's IP technology to pinpoint the physical location of Web visitors for Google so that it could better serve sponsored search results. (The parties no longer work together.) Digital balked when in 2003, Google broadened use of the geo-location technology to include serving targeted advertisements onto third-party sites in a program called Google AdSense.
Ouch.
