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Google wants to make you aware of its corporate trademark policy: Don't use it unless we tell you to — never mind the details of the actual law. Blogoscoped reader Frank Fuchs created a simple Web-based guide to getting businesses listed on search engines. For spot images, he pulled company logos. For his trouble, Google's ill-informed lawyers sent a legally questionable cease-and-desist notice, quoted after the jump.

Here's part of the letter Fuchs received:

It has come to our attention that you are using the GOOGLE logo on your website (www.locallytype.com/pages/submit.htm) without our express written permission... It misleads consumers into believing that some association exists between you and Google; and it weakens the ability of the GOOGLE mark and name to identify a single source, namely, Google.

But as Wikipedia's policy page on the use of logos explains, there's a substantial body of law protecting the use of logos in connection with criticism and commentary, and Fuchs page, which details how to edit information listed about a business by various search engines, would seem to qualify. Ironic that Google, which so often tests the boundaries of copyright law itself, would make such a hamfisted attempt to police an apparently legitimate use of its logo.