Mansef says the infringement stems from the use of Google Adwords and the defendants drive to divert traffic.
In addition to copyright infringement, the court papers, which were filed at U.S. District Court in Los Angeles, also claim trademark infringement and unfair competition against Ventura Content, Pink Visual and Denali’s parent company.
The papers say, “This action involves the unfair and unlawful practice by which an online business purchases its competitors trademark as a search engine keyword in order to misdirect traffic away from the trademark owner’s website and onto the competitors website.”
Mansef says the defendants have purchased from Internet search engines such as Google keywords containing various permutations of the word Brazzers, knowing that Brazzers is the plaintiff’s well-known brand and with deliberate intent to harm plaintiffs.
Those Google Adwords keywords include “Brazzers,” “Brazzers Mobile,” and “Brazzers Vids,” among others.
The claim further states that “by using the Brazzers mark to generate their advertisements, and then making no effort to disabuse members of the public of defendants lack of affiliation or relationship with plaintiffs, defendants intentionally seek to drive traffic away from plaintiffs’ websites and toward their own.”
"Ventura is aware of the complaint, we are reviewing it and will respond appropriately through the courts," Pink Visual’s Q Boyer told XBIZ.