Certain AdWords advertisers have received letters from Google, alerting them of the subpoena issued by Sport Court. Law professor Eric Goldman said Sport Court wants Google to give up all kinds of ad-related data as it pertains to the company’s case.

“This data sounds like it would have significant competitive value. At minimum, I suspect every trademark owner and SEO would LOVE to have this data,” said Goldman. He also obtained a copy of a letter sent by Google to advertisers affected by the subpoena.

The letter advised recipients that unless they move to quash or otherwise object to the subpoena, Google will have to hand over the requested information by July 19th.

DidIt.com’s Kevin Lee said in a ClickZ report that Google’s letter may be a tactical move to block Sport Court’s request. If one or more advertisers object, “Google can take the higher ground” and fight the subpoena from a stronger position, Lee believes.

In May 2007, Goldman discussed the Rhino Sports case. He said the issue of broad matching of keywords hadn’t been understood well by the courts, until the lawsuit against Rhino Sports by Sport Court.

However, the court may have overlooked an easy way to resolve the difference between the two parties at that time:

This court’s reasoning is solid, but I’m interested by the fact that the court didn’t discuss Rhino Sports’ ability to negative keyword match the phrase “sport court.” This would be easy for Rhino Sports to do and it would appear to solve Sport Court’s problem.

Rhino Sports has purchased keywords like ‘court’ and ‘basketball court’, and their ad copy did not contain the term ‘sport court’. That would have violated both the existing injunction against Rhino Sports (the case has been around since 2002) and Google’s terms of service for AdWords.

Our favorite blawger (law blogger) on the scene of these cases, Eric Goldman, has been following Rhino Sports v. Sport Court for a while now. The case goes back to 2002, when Sport Court strong-armed Rhino Sports into agreeing not to use the phrase "sport court" directly or indirectly on the Internet – not for domains, sponsored links, HTML, tags, you name it.

Back in May, after sponsored ads for Rhino popped up with the keyword phrase "sport court," Sport Court dragged them back in front of the judge, who ruled at the time that under Google’s broad-match system that this type of thing could happen without Rhino’s intent.

Since then, Rhino’s been trying to wriggle out of the injunction against bidding on the keyword phrase, which may or may not be why Sport Court has issued a subpoena to Google for its records regarding all purchases of the keyword phrase, cost-per-click calculations, estimated ad positions, and search volume trends.

Apparently, Google is complying, as the company sent notices to all of its advertisers informing them of the subpoena and encouraging them file with the court if they object to Google sharing that data.

It’s unclear if others face risk of litigation if they have bid on the phrase, but what’s clear to Goldman is that this type of data would be valuable to advertisers.

"I suspect every trademark owner and SEO would LOVE to have this data," he writes. "This data may be yours for the price of a complaint and a subpoena."