Google has beaten a couple of challenges to AdWords over competitor usage of trademarks as keywords, but they now have a third lawsuit coming to them from American Blind & Wallpaper Factory.

Google, AOL, Earthlink, and Ask are all on the receiving end of American Blind & Wallpaper Factory’s lawsuit over trademark infringement. ABWF contended the use of its trademarks as keywords to trigger competitor advertising violated those marks.

The Utah State Legislature has passed a bill that would make it illegal to purchase keywords relating to a competitor’s product in order to show up alongside them in search results. The Trademark Protection Act has come under much public scrutiny, most notably by Google.

The 2007 baseball season is opening with a surprising match up: the Cincinnati Reds versus AOL. The Major League Baseball club filed opposition to AOL’s application for trademark of "RED," the name of AOL’s social network for teens.

The Utah State Legislature has passed a Trademark Protection Act that creates a new type of mark called an electronic registration mark; it probably will not survive a Constitutional test according to the state’s own general counsel.

Addressing a petition for cancellation of the GMail trademark in the US, Google responded to the US Patent and Trademark Office that International Independent Investment Research’s application for the trademark was invalid from the beginning.

According to the Washington Post, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office is planning to launch a trial project in which outsiders will be able to comment on proposed patents that are working their way through the (incredibly time-consuming) patent application process. In effect, people will be allowed to post comments on patents and then other users will be allowed to vote on those comments, a la Digg.com.

The company that recently won the rights to the GMail trademark in the UK has taken its case Stateside. And if Independent International Investment Research (IIIR) is successful claiming its stake to GMail in the US as well, your @gmail.com address could change to @googlemail.com instead.

Yahoo may be set to file opposition to AOL’s use of Instant Messenger at the US Patent and Trademark Office.

Google hasn’t had much luck in Europe holding on to its Gmail trademark, but we haven’t heard much in the way of a challenge in the US. A petition for cancellation filed at the US Patent and Trademark Office shows that it certainly hasn’t gone unchallenged.

Google is well known for fighting the genericization of its trademark, and was especially incensed when Webster’s and Oxford Dictionaries recently added "to google" to its list of verbs. While it’s common for major companies to be sensitive about their trademark, a petition for cancellation of the Google trademark by a most notorious litigator was no doubt a burr under their saddle.

The legal spat between Apple and Cisco over use of the term "iPhone" was nothing that, speculatively, a big bag o’money couldn’t solve. Though the terms of the settlement both companies announced yesterday are confidential, it isn’t unreasonable to think that Cisco got some benefit beyond mutual use of the term and an interoperability agreement.

The statement reads this way:

There’s no balance in the Force with the Digg.com around, says LucasFilms, who has filed a trademark complaint against the social news site. Diggers haven’t been this torn since they walked out of The Phantom Menace and realized how much it sucked.

"That’ll do pig, that’ll do," is how SEM-at-home mom and Lactivist Jennifer Laycock concluded her beef with the National Pork Board after receiving a heartfelt apology and the promise of a donation from to the Mother’s Milk Bank of Ohio.

We’ll not pretend TV networks have a conscience any more than we might assume a 13-year-old is actually “sorry,” or that he won’t go for a joyride in the new car while you’re sleeping without the weighty parental finger threatening near-death if he does.

ClickZ reports from the the Association of National Advertiser’s Law and Business Affairs conference in New York.

Cisco has sued Apple over its use of the term iPhone for its newly announced mobile device, despite reports that they were near an agreement with Apple to share the name.

Eric Goldman reports factually on the latest trademark infringement case, ruled on by a court in Eastern Pennsylvania:

When going through the process of opening Socialtext, we need to choose a license that is a fit for a commercial open source company. Commercial open source strikes the balance between freedom and profit motive, and the license you choose becomes a contract not just for the company, but a community.

When capitalizing on the social networking explosion, it’s best to not be too obvious that you’re ripping off somebody else – especially when everybody knows that somebody else and the high-priced lawyers that come with. For example, a site called “MySpace for Midgets” is wrong for two reasons, but we’ll just focus on one.

Selling trademarks to competitors with AdWords may be a practice seeing its end of days at Google, as luxury brand Louis Vuitton declared victory after a French court ruling.

Tim O’Reilly has said his piece about the Web 2.0 trademark affair, in a way that every entrepreneur should read to understand the working practice of trademark law.