The Geico case against Google is in open court in the Eastern District of Virginia beginning today.

I don't get it.  Say a drug store is selling, oh, Old Spice.  If the drug store allowed someone to stand near the counter with a sign saying "Low-Price Colognes For Sale Here," with a map to locations where you could find the other resources, would that be trademark infringement?  What's the consumer confusion?  Consumers know that Old Spice is different from competing colognes (or whatever Old Spice is categorized as these days).  If they're searching for Old Spice, they'll buy that.  Seeing another advertisement won't dissuade them.

Google's service is no different, in my view.  You don't "own" a string of letters the way you own a house.  You can't just stop other people from using those letters or even making money off of them.  All you can do with a string of letters is prevent passing off or other forms of unfair confusion.  If a keyword search term is triggering competing ads, that's not confusing.  That's competition.

Geico can go ahead and buy "geico" as a search term if it wants to.  Strangling the Google marketplace by requiring Google to pre-clear any sold search term (who owns "ford"?) isn't useful for society.

Peaceful picture below (non-ICANN, non-internet governance, non-FCC, non-democracy moment) from Byron Henderson, who makes his home in a beautiful spot -- Sooke, British Columbia.