A federal appellate panel lifted a preliminary injunction that search engine GoTo.com won against Walt Disney Co. preventing Disney’s Go.com Web portal from using its traffic light-like logo. The ruling marked the latest in a recent flurry of legal activity surrounding the logo dispute between the two companies.
The panel, from Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals panel in San Francisco, said Disney can continue using the logo for the Go Network, the media titan’s main Net presence. The ruling reversed an earlier federal District Court that denied a request from Disney and Infoseek Corp., the search engine underlying Go.com, for a stay of a preliminary injunction obtained earlier by GoTo.com
The logos of both GoTo.com, Pasadena, CA, and Go.com consist of a green circle in a yellow square with the companies’ respective names in white lettering. Disney, Burbank, CA, began using the Go.com logo in early 1999. GoTo.com initiated its own logo in 1997.
GoTo.com has said the Go.com design mark is confusingly similar to its own. In a prepared statement, GoTo.com litigation counsel Pierce O’Donnell said, “The decision today by the Ninth Circuit to issue a stay is a procedural one and not a ruling on the merits of the case.”
GoTo.com originally brought the suit against Disney in February. A full trial is anticipated next spring.
