Forum Moderators: martinibuster
"The Paris District Court has ruled that the search company's practise of selling advertising triggered by searches for trademarked brand names does infringe the Louis Vuitton trademark. It charged Google with trademark counterfeiting, unfair competition and misleading advertising and ordered the company to pay €200,000."
I'm trying to think if this might affect Adsense/Adwords in any way.
Perhaps this could start a chain of similar cases leading to many limitations on Google using searches for trademarked names to show advertising. Or limit Google showimg other advertisers who rely on such keywords.
Please, note, that was in Europe.
Don't get me wrong, but I feel like Europeans don't like us too much ...
I see it as Europe vs America, nothing else.
Actually, I am quite surprised that the majority (of publicised!) trademark infringement cases against Google/AdWords are coming from Europe. I would have assumed - and I know other people think the same - that the majority of theses cases would come from the US. I can't explain it, but it seems we are more alert to these cases. Probably it is due to the fact that comparing advertising wasn't even legal until a few years ago. Companies guard their trademarks very strongly here. For example at the moment the trademark-owner of "Milka", a popular chocolate brand, is sueing a French seamstress whose first name is Milka to release the domain milka.fr
Maybe the US-American lawyers are too much tied up by fighting for million-dollar compensations for cases where hot coffee has surprisingly turned out to be hot (yeah, I know, I read the webpage where it was all sorted out). But still it is very strange that US-American corporations are not the leaders in trademark infringement cases against Google/AdWords.
But France is something completely different. Probably the next thing will be a campaign for Adwords to change its name in to Admots because Adwords sounds too English.. J/K
Actually, I am quite surprised that the majority (of publicised!) trademark infringement cases against Google/AdWords are coming from Europe.
I'd think that this is because the laws are different.
If Google's supposed motto is "do no evil" or whatever, why don't they comply when companies ask them to not have their brand names used to trigger ads?
[webmasterworld.com...]
Thread from Google Finance, and Business Operations about Google's fight with Googles
I think Google is doing the right thing on this, and it's a shame that France has come down on what I think is the 'evil' side in their decision. If I owned a field across from a Pepsi plant and I wanted to put a billboard up advertising Coke I'd have a perfect right. There isn't any trademark infringement unless I claim to be Pepsi, but it's an appeal to audiences that are interested in cola.
Keyword insertion on trademarked terms would be an infringement, but just having a competitor ad able to bid on keywords... nah, I just don't buy it. And I think competition is a good thing. Anything that stifles it, I'm against.
Google took a gamble on this one, anticipating that a lot of companies would be willing to bid on a competitor's trademarked keyword. The gamble isn't over, as certainly Google will appeal the ruling as far as it can through the EU - which may ultimately rule in Google's favor. But there is a good argument against Google's practice, both in terms of trademark dilution and consumer confusion, so we'll have to wait and see what happens.
