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Marc Bitanga recently created a flowchart for Google’s Adwords Trademark policy. Although the flowchart doesn’t address affiliates, shopping engines, etc. it does do a great job of visualizing many of the common trademark complaint cases.
Also, although the graphic states that his flowchart is for the US, UK and CA, it only represents the US [...]
We’ve found a number of Google Places advertisements appearing on searches for ‘Brand + Product Category’ and include a link to a competitive local retailer. The advertisements represent an entirely new AdWords unit that we hadn’t seen before and seem to be designed specifically for Google Places. A handful of examples below:
A search for [...]
Posted by David Naffziger in PPC, adwords, case law
22 Sep
An adviser to the European Court of Justice just issued an opinion that “Google has not committed a trademark infringement by allowing advertisers to select [trademarked] keywords”.
While the opinion is non-binding, the court is generally expected to follow the opinion.
Google has moved to aggressively open up trademark bidding in the US, the UK and [...]
We’ve seen advertisements similar to the one below for “top-rated-coupons.com” appear in Yahoo search ads for a number of the programs that we monitor:
The ads are typically shown for “brand” + coupon searches. This particular advertiser isn’t an affiliate though. They are actually selling a mobile recurring billing scheme that gives “access” to [...]
Posted by David Naffziger in adwords, affiliate marketing, poaching
01 Sep
Geno Prussakov has a great post on the AM Navigator blog about how recent changes to Google Suggest can help prevent trademark poaching.
The screenshot below demonstrates a new way to bring up advertisements using Google Suggest:
While Geno’s point is that:
From the above image, it is obvious that Google Suggest puts the original website on the [...]
In early July, the Rosetta Stone launched a lawsuit against Google for trademark infringement through its AdWords program.
These lawsuits are not new, a number of brands have sued Google over the years. Eric Goldman counts 9 similar lawsuits currently making their way through the legal system.
This lawsuit is notable from the prior suits in [...]
Posted by David Naffziger in BrandVerity, PPC, PoachMark, adwords, affiliate marketing, cybersquatting
10 Jun
We’re excited to announce that PoachMark has officially launched. With over 200 affiliate programs monitored, we’re confident that PoachMark meets the robustness standards that we’ve established internally for this milestone.
PoachMark is now monitoring the affiliate programs of top 5 e-commerce merchants and top 5 Internet advertisers along with niche online retailers. We think Stephen [...]
Updated on May 21 to reflect Google’s worldwide trademark policy changes and recent moves in the US.
Google
Yahoo
Microsoft
Search Ads
Trademarks can be protected in:
—-Keywords used to trigger ads?
No (US/UK/JP + 190 countries)
Yes (FR, DE and most of Europe)
Yes
Yes
—-Ad text and title
No
No
No
—-Display URL
No
No
No
Type of protection:
All but resellers and informational sites
All but resellers [...]
Late Thursday, Google announced the largest changes to their US AdWords policy in some time. Previously, trademark owners could prevent anyone from using their trademarks in their ad copy. Now, resellers and information sites may utilize the trademarked terms in their ad copy.
This shift will likely be a boon for shopping comparison sites, [...]
Google announced a change yesterday to its AdWords trademark policy in 190 countries, bringing that policy in line with its policies for the US, CA, UK & IE.
Trademark Bidders (New Countries that Google will now allow TradeMark Bidding in)
The full list of 190 countries affected can be found in Google’s announcement:
Countries like Japan, South Africa, [...]