Google has agreed to settle an investigation by a Government agency in the United States into advertisements accepted from online Canadian pharmacy advertisers, which resulted in the unlawful importation of prescription drugs into the United States.

It is unlawful in the United States for foreign pharmacies to supply prescription drugs to customers in the United States. However, a number of online Canadian pharmacies used Google’s largest advertising programme, AdWords, to target potential purchasers of prescription drugs within the United States.

The AdWords service displays sponsored advertisements in response to queries by users of the Google search engine. In addition, as was the case here, advertisers can ‘geo-target’ their advertisements by selecting the countries in which the advertisements will be seen by Google users.
 
The settlement figure represents the proceeds of prescription drug sales by the Canadian online pharmacies which used AdWords. Google also agreed to undertake a number of compliance and reporting measures in respect of its drug advertising.

This skirmish is the latest in a number of legal challenges faced by Google to the operation of its AdWords service, including a number of brand owners launching trade mark infringement actions (see our previous article here).

Contributed by David Cullen.