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 [...]

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 [...]

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, review [...]

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 [...]

Amazon sent an email to all its affiliates this morning announcing a change in its paid search policy for affiliates – Affiliates will no longer be allowed to direct link to Amazon. The issue of whether search affiliates add to the bottom line is a hotly debated one in affiliate marketing. In our opinion, the [...]

Those that have been following the various legal wranglings over search ads and trademarks recognize that a key issue is whether search ads classify as a ‘use in commerce’.  This distinction is important for trademark holders – very few trademark protections apply unless the trademark is ‘used in commerce’.  I’m surprised that there has ever [...]

SearchEngineLand wrote on a recent ruling by a French court that fined Google 350,000 Euros for allowing companies to bid on the trademarks of two companies. Google maintains two policies for trademark use in AdWords: The policy in the US/UK/IE/CA and the policy used in the Rest of the World. Google’s policy in France allows [...]

PPCHero has a great post that discusses why trademarked terms are allowed in display URLs: Basically, a company can have a trademarked name as a real sub-domain on their site for site architecture purposes. Example, using the same Nike reference, if I own a website called shoesgalore.com, and I have a full page of Nike [...]

We picked up these recent additions to several seasonal searches.  This is a tradition that Google has been doing since 2005. We’ve found six already – let us know if you find any more.