ShoeMoney Reaches Settlement With Google Employee Over AdWords Violations

Over the last few months we’ve been tracking a lawsuit between online marketing guru Jeremy Schoemaker and a Google employee named Keyen Farrell. This week comes news that Schoemaker has settled the case with Farrell, though details are scant. Money changed hands (in Schoemaker’s favor), but Schoemaker signed a confidentially agreement as part of the settlement that forbids him from discussing the matter further. You can see his full statement below.

It’s been a long road to get here. Schoemaker originally filed suit against Farrell last April, when Farrell used Schoemaker’s trademarked term “Shoemoney” in his ad copy — a breach of Google’s terms of service. The case was interesting not just because of Schoemaker’s notoriety, but because Farrell is an employee working out of Google’s New York office. Given his position, it was feasible that Farrell had used his access at Google to somehow bypass the system’s trademark filters (among other things), though Google denied this and attributed the fault to human error.

Farrell subsequently filed an affadavit stating he didn’t know that the term was trademarked and blamed a failure of Google’s text filters. In June, Farrell then went on to counter-sue Schoemaker for defamation. Farrell dropped half of the counter-suit a month ago, and soon thereafter approached Schoemaker about a settlement.

Yesterday, Schoemaker posted the following to his blog:

For those that have been following my lawsuit against the Farrells, there have been several developments. A few weeks ago, after originally withdrawing half of their defamation lawsuit against me, the Farrells withdrew the other half and completely abandoned their counter-suit against me. I was then approached about the possibility of accepting a settlement offer in exchange for me dismissing my trademark infringement case against the Farrells. Unfortunately, I’m not allowed to write about the nature of the settlement talks or the amount of money that was offered because the settlement offers that were made required confidentiality.
I can say that my lawsuit against the Farrells was settled. This has been a real educational experience for me. I was looking forward to getting my day in court, but I can also say that I am very happy with the final result. There is not a whole lot more I am allowed to discuss.