The US Supreme Court has denied certiorari for the Ninth Circuit decision in Multi Time Machine Inc (MTM) v Amazon.com Inc on February 29 2016, which held that Amazon did not infringe MTM’s trademark in its presentation of other competing products in a consumer’s search results for MTM’s product on Amazon.com.
MTM manufactures and markets watches under its federally registered trademark MTM SPECIAL OPS. It sells its watches directly to customers and through various retailers; it does not sell or distribute its watches on Amazon.com.
Amazon is an online retailer that houses an extensive catalogue of various goods and services for sale on the platform. In order to provide search results in which the consumer is most likely to be interested,
Amazon’s search function does not simply match the words in the user’s query to words in a document, such as a product description in Amazon’s catalogue. Rather, its search function produces relevant results using a variety of techniques, some of which rely on user behaviour. Amazon’s search function can thus provide consumers with relevant results that may otherwise be overlooked.
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