Confie sues Insurify over trademark keyword bidding
Confie and several of its subsidiaries filed a federal lawsuit against Insurify in November 2025, accusing the Cambridge-based online car insurance platform of trademark infringement, unfair competition, and deceptive business practices.
The case, filed in the US District Court for the District of Massachusetts, seeks damages and injunctive relief to prevent Insurify from using the “Confie Marks” — a group of registered and common-law trademarks owned by Confie, one of the largest personal lines insurance distributors in the US. The trademarks at issue include Freeway, Cost-U-Less, Estrella, InsureOne, Oasis, USAgencies, and Velox. Confie says these brands reflect decades of development, significant marketing investment, and substantial goodwill.
According to the complaint, Confie alleges that Insurify used its trademarks in online advertising campaigns to capture traffic from consumers searching for Confie brands as early as 2021. The plaintiffs claim Insurify purchased Confie trademarks as keywords through Google, Bing, and other search advertising programs. Consumers searching for Confie subsidiaries were allegedly directed to Insurify’s website, creating confusion and suggesting an affiliation or endorsement. The complaint claims the conduct went beyond keyword bidding and amounted to a broader effort to mislead consumers through ads implying a relationship between the companies.
“Upon learning of Insurify’s unauthorized infringing uses of the Confie Marks in 2021, Confie promptly notified Insurify and demanded that Insurify stop its infringing use of the Confie Marks. Although Insurify initially seemed to cooperate and take corrective action, with the incidents of infringement declining in 2022 and 2023, Confie started to see new sporadic instances of infringement in 2024.”
The filings also describe communications between the parties. In early 2025, Confie’s CMO, Joshua Marder, contacted Insurify’s Vice President of Marketing, Andrew Huang, about alleged trademark misuse. While Insurify reportedly said it would address the issue, Confie claims the ads continued throughout 2025.
Confie has since asked the court to issue a temporary restraining order to stop Insurify from using its trademarks in search advertising, keyword bidding, and sponsored content, and from displaying those marks on webpages that offer insurance quotes. Insurify opposed the request, arguing that there is no ongoing infringement because it has already paused bidding on Confie-related keywords, added the terms as negative keywords, disabled dynamic keyword insertion, and modified or removed the challenged website content. The company also said that keyword bidding on competitor terms is standard and lawful, that any remaining references are editorial and non-misleading, and that Confie’s delay in seeking emergency relief undermines any claim of urgency or irreparable harm.
“Confie has introduced more, new marks at every stage of this dispute—about a handful in pre-suit informal emails, then about twenty in the Complaint, and now over forty in its TRO papers. Each time Confie has raised a new complaint, Insurify has worked cooperatively with Confie to address it. And due to the escalating context in which Confie is now first notifying Insurify of new complaints, Insurify has taken extraordinary measures to appease Confie, including ceasing all keyword bidding (which is permissible and inactionable conduct) on all alleged Confie word marks and designating the same as negative keywords whilst it undertakes the complex and timeconsuming process of comprehensively auditing its massive digital advertising program, which consists of over 1,000,000 keywords sorted in 185 digital ad campaigns and 33,000 ad groups across multiple platforms.”
Insurify also argues that the lawsuit stems from a failed business relationship👇🏻:
“In apparent recognition of Insurify’s success in the online insurance marketplace, in 2021, Confie engaged Insurify to generate insurance leads for Confie. However, Insurify terminated the relationship after a short duration because the high service fees that Confie levied on consumers resulted in an unacceptably low conversion rate. (Id.) When their attempt to partner with Insurify failed, jilted Confie commenced the course of conduct that has culminated in this suit.”
Confie is seeking an injunction and damages. The court, for now, has temporarily blocked Insurify from bidding on its trademarks until March 10, 2026, while both sides submit additional briefs on the keyword bidding issue. This gives Confie short-term protection, while Insurify focuses on compliance and preparing its technical and legal arguments for the next phase.
