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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 [...]
Posted by David Naffziger in ACPA, case law, typosquatting
29 Aug
In December, a court awarded Verizon a $33.5M default judgment against OnlineNIC for typosquatting on 683 domain names such as verizonphnes.com. OnlineNIC, based in China, never even showed up at court.
While it might seem that a judgment such as this would be impossible to collect, the source for nearly all cybersquatting revenue originates [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
Posted by David Naffziger in adwords, case law
11 Feb
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 [...]
Posted by David Naffziger in ACPA, case law, cybersquatting, typosquatting
24 Dec
Verizon issued a press release today that announced a record $33.5M cybersquatting judgment against OnlineNIC. There were 663 domains in question and the judge chose to award $50K per domain, presumably under the guidelines of the Anti-Cybersquatting Protection Act (ACPA), which allow a penalty of between $1K and $100K per domain. Very little is known [...]
Posted by David Naffziger in case law, domains, typosquatting
19 Dec
In the Vulcan Golf vs. Google case, the judge recently denied a motion by the plaintiffs to turn the lawsuit into a class action. We’ve mentioned the lawsuit before, but the general gist is that the plaintiffs are alleging that Google and several other parties participate in trademark infringement by selling ads on infringing [...]
Posted by David Naffziger in ACPA, BrandVerity, PoachMark, PoachMark Pool, case law, poaching
19 Dec
We’re excited to announce the launch of the PoachMark Pool – a collaborative approach to catching trademark poachers. It allows you to benefit from the discoveries of other members.
What is the PoachMark Pool?
The PoachMark Pool is a shared resource of search ads contributed by PoachMark customers. All of the data we retrieve about a particular [...]
Posted by David Naffziger in affiliate marketing, case law
03 Dec
Sarah Bird at SEOMoz put together an excellent summary of the DSW vs. Zappos case. DSW sued Zappos because one of Zappo’s affiliates created organic pages that targeted DSW terms, used DSW TMs in the domain names, used DSW images, but linked to Zappos pages (through CJ).
The initial Complaint was denied, however the judge gave [...]
Eric Goldman points to a recent ruling that declared purchasing an ad based on a keyword (a practice currently allowed by Google) to be a use in commerce.
Eric also points out that there has been split rulings on whether this constitutes a use in commerce:
The court is right about the majority vote, but it’s hardly [...]