Liability of search engines for sponsored and natural results – the case of Google

The latest opinion of European Court of Justice (ECJ) Advocate General Poiares Maduro acknowledged the legality of the AdWords service offered by the Google search engine. If this conclusion is accepted by the ECJ, then search engines such as Google, Yahoo! or MSN will not have to change their current keyword selection practices. This does not mean, though, that location tool providers will definitely be exempted from liability for trademark infringements. The advocate general made it clear that search engine operators may be liable under national law for trademark infringement, and will not be able to rely on the limitation of liability for hosting services in Directive 2000/31/EC on electronic commerce. The situation might be different with respect to natural search services, which may fall under the application of liability exemptions in Directive 2000/31/EC. The present contribution will analyse the consequences of this interpretation for information society service providers in the European Union (EU).