Could recent trademark disputes be the only thing to prevent Google from continuing its incredible growth …

File this under “I didn’t know that, but didn’t really care anyway”. The Industry Standard looks at a trademark application, that Google let die …

Savvysoft, a New York City-based financial software company is facing a trademark infringement challenge by Microsoft over the use of the term “Excel.”

Metaspinner Media GmbH is filing a suit with the district court in Hamburg, Germany over its trademark “Preispiraten” being used as a Google AdWord.

FreeBooble, a search engine devoted to free adult content, received a demand from Google that they cease operations. Google claims FreeBooble infringes on the search engine’s trademark rights, something Google is very familiar with.

In what may be a response to Google allowing bidding on trademarked keywords, or merely for the purposes of preserving their trademark, Overstock.com has sent an email to their affiliates demanding that they stop bidding on Overstock’s trademarked keywords.

Ever since Google and Overture have allowed competitors to bid on trademarked keywords, legal trouble have not been far behind them. Google is facing lawsuits in Europe and the US because of its trademark policy. Add auto insurance company Geico to the list of companies that have filed suit for improper trademark use.

Claiming that Google violated the terms of an injunction issued from a Hamburg court, German meta search engine metaspinner has “vowed” to take the search engine to court. The dispute once again comes from Google’s trademark policy.

Google’s newest policy concerning bidding on trademarked slogans for AdWords purposes has come under fire. French insurance company AXA has filed suit against the search engine for allowing others to bid on keywords that AXA has trademarked.

As pointed out by Aaron Wall over at SearchEngineJournal.com, Google is changing their approach in their handling of trademarked keywords for their AdWords program. Before, companies were not allowed to bid on keywords that were trademarked by other companies, like the “Just Do It” phrase by Nike.

The rollout of Google’s new email service, Gmail, may have hit a snag. The Market Age, a smaller British company, claims they already have trademark rights for the name “Gmail”, and have been using it since June of 2002.

“… I’d like to register my business name with the proper town authorities as a sole proprietorship. To protect myself and my business name from being copied and altered, do I have to register any and all variations of the name? And is this done separately or is it done under the one application? … Is this what I need to do in order to stop anyone from using a variation of my business name? And can my business name be trademarked along with its variations?”

I recently received an email from a concerned, fellow Internet business owner, asking for my opinion on an issue that could literally destroy his Internet business and the business of several other domains involved.

You’ve been using your company name for a while now and, as things get more crowded, you’re beginning to wonder if anyone else uses it, what the law is, and what you should do, if anything to protect it.