Links for those categories, in italics, will take you to their pages. I've also been involved in some of these cases. A disclosure statement is at the bottom of the page. Cases against Excite continue. Estee Lauder has won in its fight to prevent Excite from selling banner ads linked to its trademarks, at least in Germany.
Cases remain pending in France and the United States, and the Germany ruling is open to appeal.
One of the better articles on the issues revolving around the Playboy and Estee Lauder lawsuits against Excite, over banner advertisements involving their trademarks. It includes a survey of the different policies search engines have, at least for those who were willing to answer the question. This shouldn't be a mystery to a curious public and potential advertisers. Each search engine should have or should establish a policy on this issue. This article takes another look at some of the issues involved, with some comments from the original author of the robots.txt standard.