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Pepsi mentioning Coke never was "illegal." The whole issue is not whether the action is "against the law," but whether the action intrudes on the private property of another without permission, i.e., trespassing.

The Pepsi/Coke ads were just as good for Coke as for Pepsi, so there was no lawsuit. Many other ads are the same. Lever Bros. owned a score of brand names for laundry detergent, and regularly played them off against each other in advertising -- proving that when the names are mentioned, everybody wins.

Trade mark is the subject of labeling. Using another's trade mark to deceitfully divert traffic to one's own business violates the principle of trade mark law. You may say that a clothing store advertising "Safeway" does not deceive because as soon as a customer enters, he sees it is not a grocery store. But neither Safeway nor the courts would agree with you.

The courts may rule that "Rosetta Stone" is a generic term already in use for language translation. Or they may rule that this is an invitation to trade mark infringement. The may be just, and it may not. The problem with these "tough cases" is that they make "bad law," establishing precedents that may be further extended to the ridiculous in later cases.

I'm better and cheaper than Webovator... why overpay and buy that junk, when you can buy mine for less!

The above is an obvious example... how does it feel to have someone say such a thing about all of the hard work you put in to developing your company and branding yourself, meanwhile taking customers from you all while using YOUR NAME to do it?

It's called ETHICS people.

That silly word most greedy people have deleted from their dictionary... who gives a damn about someone's rights to steal my brand, people should care about doing what's RIGHT.

I have no clue how lazy, unimaginative, dishonest people make it in this world, when all they put any effort towards is stealing from someone else's brilliant ideas.

Yes, google would scream bloody murder if it was THEIR name being used, but they seem to think it's okay to hand the keys to SOMEBODY ELSE'S kingdom over to low life scum, all in the name of MONEY and GREED.

I hate what this country is becoming, all due to greed. Disgusting.

Frankly, all terms, other than those that are invented words or phrases, are historical terms. After all, Google too is not a made up word. Well, technically, it is a derivative of "googol", which was itself was a made up word that became common in our lexicon. The point is that there was googol before there was Google. Yet, they have trademarked that specific phonemic combination and would most likely defend it aggressively.

Anyway, I hope Rosetta Stone and the other companies are successful. Sure, Rosetta Stone is a historical term. However, the argument is not that Google is intentionally confusing people by giving results that refer to the historical definition of Rosetta Stone. It is that Google allows its advertisers to use trademarked terms to mislead users and direct users away from what they are seeking to Google and their advertisers' benefit - to the detriment of companies such as Rosetta Stone.

There really should be an element of fairness. If one were to call directory assistance and ask for the phone number for Pizza Hut but was given the phone number for Domino's - intentionally - one would assume Pizza Hut would have a legal grievance - especially if directory assistance was paid to make that redirect. And that's the case even though both "Pizza" and "Hut" are terms of a historical nature. Now I'm hungry.