Google is being fined hundreds of thousands of euros for allowing certain trademarked [sic] words to have advertisements run against them.
It’s hard to see how this makes any sense at all. First, unless the ads are designed to confuse someone, there should be no question that ads against a competitor’s keywords are perfectly legal. There’s no customer confusion (the point of trademark law). It’s no different than having your product placed on the grocery store shelf next to competing products, or (as is quite common in supermarkets these days) having a coupon print out for your product when you buy a competing one. Claiming this is trademark infringement is just a weak attempt to stifle competition by brands that don’t want to compete.
Not so weak, I guess.
Originally posted 2009-09-21 22:24:55. Republished by Blog Post Promoter
The question of trademark infringement when a competitor trademark is used to trigger an ad was referred to the European Court of Justice by the supreme courts of four different European countries. Keep an eye on class46.eu for updates on this topic! To get closer to the source material, you can read Class 46 and you might understand why it is not a good thing to take for granted a reported from a report that takes its source from another report…
Thanks, Frédéric! — RDC