Bidding on a Trademark - Policy

Trying to understand what an otherwise reputable company is thinking

[PPCBidder]

Ok, I used to bid on zzzz.com as an affiliate. About a year ago zzzz co. decided to protect their brand name and banned affiliates from bidding on keywords zzzz and zzzz.com (zzzz com). Not wanting trouble I complied and was understanding of the decision. Now a year later, I search on zzzz and low and behold I see a full compliment of adwords ads for zzzzcompetitorA.com, zzzzcompetitorB.com, etc. Somewhat amazed by this I wrote zzzz asking for permission to once again bid on zzzz as competitors had taken over the term. I initially got a response that the term was still forbidden, but would be forwarded to higher-ups for consideration. Now after more than a week, no reply at all (not surprising but rather frustrating).

I don't understand this at all. zzzz is a HUGE company and to my understanding all they need to do is contact google to 'shut off' the trademarked term zzzz.com completely, no? Why wouldn't zzzz do that?

What is up with zzzz!? Can somebody explain how this benefits them?

<edit> - now looking at another large company (yyyy) that I know forbids affiliates from bidding on their name, I see the same thing. Is "yyyy com" an acceptable bid?! The term yyyy seems to be restricted (has just one ad, probably with exemption), but "yyyy com"/"yyyy.com" (which will appear on search partner sites when domain is searched) has over 50 placed ads but none by yyyy affiliates. I am surprised yyyy would put up with this.

Can companies not protect their trademark on search partner sites because technically this is a broadmatch on 'com' or something? I suppose .us, etc would cause bigger problems. Now i am just confused.

[eWhisper]

There are a few ways of looking at this. Not saying one of these is in action, just tossing out possibilities to think about.

First, many companies who produce products forbid affiliates from bidding on their terms, but let other companies who sell their products bid on their trademark term.

i.e. Brand A has an affiliate program. Brand A is huge and is also a supplier of Product A. Supplier A buys Brand As products and resells them. Affiliates for Brand A can't bid on these terms. Supplier A has an affiliate program. Supplier A doesn't care if their affiliates bid on trademarked terms.

Brand A might not care if Supplier A is bidding on their terms as they are selling their product. Brand A might also not care if Affiliates for Supplier A bid on these terms. However, Brand A doesn't want the 'official' site to compete agaisnt affiliates, thus only their affiliates are barred from these terms.

The above might sound confusing, but I've seen examples of the above happen.

The second is that all the other people bidding on Brand As terms are resellers/suppliers of Brand A, and thus are bound by a different TOS.

Of course, it could also just be people are ignoring the TOS and the Brand hasn't done anything about it yet. If this is the case, it is possible for Brand A to not payout comissions for those people as they are violating the TOS.