Google's Business Model Challenged by Lawsuit

Seems American Airlines (AA) is fed up with Google making money off of their protected trademarks. American Airlines filed a lawsuit against Google to stop it from earning money when competitors of AA pay Google to have their ad displayed in the 'sponsored results' section when a prospective traveller types in an American Airlines trademark.

Is it ok for Google to let one company use another company's trademark to try and steal business away? Should Google get paid to rent a company's trademarks to competitors on a pay-per-click basis?

This isn't the first time Google has been sued for this, but American Airlines is the largest company to sue to date. Although they've won similar cases in the U.S. they did settle a lawsuit by Geico a couple of years back and they've lost similar cases in France.

I'm going to follow this one because I think Google may very well lose this one and the ramifications could be significant for all search engine companies and perhaps for us Googbies in the long run as well.

Here's an article about the lawsuit....