IN BRIEF
This article discusses the much anticipated decision of the High
Court in relation to whether Google was liable for misleading or
deceptive conduct through its AdWords programme.
In our previous article
Google Adwords on Trial: ACCC Establishes Misleading or Deceptive
Conduct we discussed the decision of the Full Federal Court,
which found that Google was liable for misleading or deceptive
conduct as a result of the purchase and use of words associated
with a business of a competitor of the Google customer. That
decision has been overturned by the High Court.
To recap, when a user typed into the search engine "alpha
dog training" the first sponsored link that user would see
would be the heading "alpha dog training" but this link
would direct the viewer to Alpha Dog Training's competitor
Ausdog. ACCC claimed that this, and other similar conduct,
constituted misleading or deceptive conduct by
Google in breach of the Trade Practices Act 1974
(now the Aust
