By silicon.com, 13 February 2004 16:40
NEWS 15.02.1999: US men's magazine Playboy has filed a lawsuit against Netscape and Excite, claiming the internet search engines are making advertising money out of its trademark name.
The issue revolves around keyword selling - a practice where companies pay a search engine so their banner ads appear when users search for a particular keyword.
An Excite search for the word 'playboy' returns Playboy as the first search choice, but also returns banner ads for unrelated pornography sites.
13.02.2004: Five years on and what's changed? Er, nothing, it would appear. A story last month on silicon.com shows that Hugh Hefner won't have his trademarks linked with just any old smut.
In January, it was announced that Playboy would once again be suing Netscape and Excite over trademark infringement. Sound familiar? Only this time, the issue wasn't banner ads, it was pop-ups - marketing that linked the company's precious bunny trademark and jazz mag with unrelated porn products when searchers used the terms 'playboy' or 'playmate'.
From the looks of things, Playboy's legal battle to protect its immaculate reputation will go for longer than a Duracell bunny on Viagra.
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