In Italy to date there have only been a few cases examining keywords issues heard by the Milan Court in which specifically an action was brought against Google.

Apart from an interim injunction measure request in August 2007 from the Court of Milan for allegedly unlawful use of a domain name as a link to a website, the first real decision in Italy relating to Adwords and possible search engine liability was issued on 11 March 2009.

In this case the plaintiffs, two well known car rental companies, Win-Rent and Avis brought action not only against their competitors for trade mark infringement based on the Adword use but also against Google (Google Inc, Google Italy S.r.l. and Google UK Ltd) as a joint tortfeasor.

The Court of Milan held that the use of the mark AVIS as a keyword for a sponsored link by a competitor company was an act of trade mark infringement as well as unfair competition. It amounted to taking unfair advantage of the trade mark of a third party due to its reputation with a view to promoting its own services. The Court did not hold Google liable however this seems to have been because the ‘adwords’ contract was entered into with Google Ireland Ltd and, the Google defendant companies summoned in the proceeding were therefore not the correct Google companies. It is yet to be determined whether the Italian courts will find liability on the part of Internet Service Providers in cases where advertisers are held liable for trade mark infringement.