The judge in GEICO's trademark infringement case against Google and Yahoo!'s Overture division has declined the defendants' motions to dismiss, effectively giving the go-ahead to a case with big implications for search engines' use of trademarks as advertising keywords.
[clickz.com...]
This tends to worry me, b/c how far do a you take this. I mean, if they win, would it be that no trademarked word could be bid on? Or that only competative companies couldn't bid on it? If you can't bid on any trademark terms, that would put a serious dent in avaliable KW inventory.
1) What precedents exist in trademark law and what those precedents tell us about the likely outcome of thee GEICO case.
2) What % of ppc inventory comes from trademarked terms, both in terms of impression, click and revenue?
I never dreamed of the name becoming a brand and having people search for those 2 words to find my site. To my surprise about 10% of my current traffic comes from people searching for my business name instead of my product line.
Along comes "Large American Company" and introduces another product line using my business name. Their line could cross over into what I have been doing for years and YES they do have a TM pending for my business name.
I also have a more specific TM pending and I expect a little tug of war over all of this. I do have paper work supporting my use that predates their use by 25+ years.
Now, if every one and their brother starts buying PPC listings using that name it would lead to TM dilution and in that case I would have to agree with Geico.
Until I ran into my problem I would have gone the other way for sure.
I guess it all depends on how you value your name and what people are doing with it....
I agree it deserves a lot of attention, but the U.S. judges are behind on technology issues, and old trademark laws that were written when the net didn't exist are being applied to this medium. And I think that will slow down the entire process, and also help appeals go through, which will further delay how the entire case is settled.
Not to get off the subject to much - but China has one of the best systems in place to help the judges out - they're allowed to have a 'tech advisor' help explain to them all the nuiances of what's going on, where in the U.S. - the judges aren't allowed advisors during a court case like that.
To get back on subject - I think for most of us, it's a wait and see game. My opinion changes as often as I change accounts to see what type of bidding I need to do and who's bidding on my trademark name, or if I want to bid on someone else's.
