warlordbb - 1:48 pm on Apr 8, 2003 (gmt 0)

I wanted to add our experience here just for kicks.

I am the webmaster for a company called Widgetville Wraps. We are a 27 year old brick and mortar paper goods company and have always put the TM after our business name. We registered the "Widgetville Wraps" with Widgetstate in 1998.

Recently we went to Google and typed in Widgetville Wraps. To our horror, we see 3 of our most rivalrous competitors, 2 Premium Ads and 1 Adwords. One of the Premiums even starts their ad text with "Widgetville Wraps" (I'm sure this is some type of automatic thing but still...).

Our owner was livid. None of these three competitors had anything to do with Widgetville, it was a clear cut case of them trying to capitalize on the work we had done to establish our name in the paper goods industry.

We immediately sicked our lawyers on them and Google and now, no more ads, except ours, show on "Widgetville Wraps".

Now, the BIG difference here is that both you and the other guy actually have a business in Widgetville.