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Google Loses AdWords Case
TheChillPill writes "Google has lost a case brought by a company whose name was being used by Adwords users. Insurance firm GEICO, who had not been using Adwords themselves, objected to Google allowing it's advertisers to use the term in their campaigns." This is a reversal for Google based on an earlier story.
This really saddens me. But it's okay because I just saved a bunch of money on car insurance
I never spellcheck and I freely admit it. Save your karma for more worthwhile "lol erorrs" replies
Should have had a Case Else.
Its understandable seeing as how Geico was losing 15% of its profits.
Are they sure that people weren't actually using the word "gecko"? I've heard a lot of people get the two confused.
I wonder if this is going to open the door for companies to take action against domain names that are similar to their trademarked name.
If it's unacceptable for Google to sell "Geico", will it also be unacceptable for someone to have www.G31c0.com and no, I don't know if that's a valid URL or not.
They should just remove Geico from their search DB all together, you know just to protect their trademark! Hope they are quite clear on their website info in their commercials, because that'll be the only way anyone finds it then!
This pretty much proves the pathetic state of our legal system... The fact that essentially the same case can be tried twice within a very close timeframe and two different results can be achieved. I can understand that something 50 years ago may get a different result than now based on changes in society... But we're talking here about two of the same cases sitting in the same medium in a very close proximity in time. I think it's time for some judicial reform... Maybe that's just me...
Google is one of many search service. You use it voluntarily. Why shouldn't they have the right to display what they want depending on the word you type in. They are not using the geico name illegally as I know, simply display competitor's sites when that search is iniated.
A similiar thing happens when I go to fast food (KFC, Tacobell, Pepsi owned?) restaurants and ask for a Sprite - "No, sorry sir, we only carry Slice. Would you like that?" They don't simply say no and leave it at that.
They could as easily drop geico's webpage completely - that should be within google's rights. No one promised Geico that they be displayed at all after all in this privately owned website.
There is no such thing as bad publicity. Geico just got their advertising courtesy of Google and didn't even have to pay Google for it. Slick move.
Sick of stupidity? http://www.patentlystupid.com
I just recently saw a commercial for some insurance company and noticed that they didn't use Geico's name. Instead, the guy says, "She had the gecko." I guess that insurance company made the right move if Geico is litigation happy, trying to protect their name.
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I used GEICO when I was overseas because they provided insurance to soldiers, from 1991 to 2003 I used GEICO, then I had an accident and filed a claim.
Their adjuster did not really even look at the vehicle and they only repaired the visible damage without even looking underneath the vehicle, when I griped to a person making a followup call, they fixed some of the issues and left the rest unrepaired. Then they would not renew my policy.
I am not the only person they have done this to, they are hands down the worst insurance agency I have ever dealt with, and I am sure that my daring to complain is what lost my coverage. Now I have better coverage at lower rates with another firm.
I hope this is reversed, because geeks do not let geeks use GEICO.
And... and there was a Google AdSense advertisment showing on this very comment page.
/., why?
Why, oh
>> Standing on head makes smile of frown, but rest of face also upside down.
... to corporations not protecting me enough. Let's pretend for a second that this case did -not- involve Teh Intarweb; which scenario is then more likely:
GEICO sues the Wall Street Journal, because Progressive places an ad in said WSJ invoking GEICO's name without the proper attribution (usually a "* Blah is trademark and copyright of CompanyCo").
-theGreater.-or-
GEICO sues Progressive for placing said ad in the WSJ and thereby diluting the GEICO trademark.
Geico is claiming that Google violated their trade mark rights, but that doesn't really make any sense. It is rather obvious that if a car insurance company wants their competitors' names to trigger their ad, that it is completely within their rights. I wish the article was more specific on what law they claimed Google was violating.
Kudos to the guy in the other story that said who cares as long as the judges stick to their rulings.
Let's see... Geico had a fit because one of their competitors "bought" the word Geico as an adword so their ad would show up when they search Geico on Google? Is this correct?
Easy way to fix that, take all references of "Geico" out of Google.
On one hand, I can understand where Geico is coming from, but on the other hand, advertisers use their competitors names' in their ads all the time. Can State Farm sue because Geico says I can save 15% off their price? Where does this end? Are websites that compare prices illegal?
I can see if you're avoiding mentioning someone else's trademark in your ad. But this boarders on dictating what you can and cannot search for.
FLR
First it says that NOW "Google only takes action when a trade marked term is used in the text of an ad - i.e. the trade marked term can still trigger the ad" A few sentences onward, and there's this: there had been a breach of the insurance firm's trade mark rights "solely with regard to those sponsored links that use GEICO's trade marks in their headings or text." So does Google use Geico's trademarks in the ad text and headers or not?
There are 11 types of people. Those who understand binary, those who don't and those who are sick of this lame joke.
The judge must have been paid off by M$. That's the only conclusion a rational person could come to in this case.
I'll be monitoring this discussion; surely it will be a sneak peek at what's to come when SCO wins their case against IBM.
this is using another company's name to advertise your products. wrong.
now if something could be done about those sites that have lines of product names in "invisible" text just to bump their rankings...
and while we're at it, how about offering the option to have user-defined filters always applied, for example unless I say otherwise I'd always like my Google searches to reject all sites that contain the phrase "compare prices for" .
Seems a little drastic to me. Think that it will open up Google to a lot of cases just like that where someone is trying to get that little extra advertisement in. But the problem is that Geico paid for the advertisement and other people paid for it as well. Same thing happens in the Yellow Book(tm), businesses pay to be in it and Geico isn't the only one under Insurance. Sure if it were Geico insurance header then they might be, but there are still other insurance places and it used to be a free market. used to be.
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If I were google, I would have started the company in another country. Hopefully one small enough that I'd basicaly control the economy.
Might have been hard to get people move there, though. Ah wel.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
There is no good reason why someone shouldn't be able to run an ad that says, "we're cheaper than Geico, click here to find out how much you'll save by switching FROM Geico." Society is better off when we take off these arbitrary restrictions that keep cut-throat competition to a minimum by not allowing competitors to easily target each other. If they were trying to pass themselves off as Geico, that's one thing, but trademarks should not be an issue otherwise.
This is why I hate lawyers. To anyone else, most cases would need last only a few hours. Then you have the lawyers who need to go through elaborate procedures, arguing technicalities, making mountains out of mole hills and all of that happy horse shit. What we need is a jury power called, "dismiss with extreme prejudice." If a company gets a few cases dismissed under those terms, then the court begins to charge a non-refundable fee everytime it has to review a case brought by a company or individual. Every honest victory then counts as a positive mark against those bad marks and when they're 1:1 the fee stops being charged.
Those big on law theory wring their hands about stuff like people taking it to the streets. Well here's a novel suggestion, if the company abuses the courts like this, gets censured and then takes matters into its own hands... the government should storm its offices with police in full ninja gear, slam the people responsible head first into the wall while hand-cuffing them and charge them with murder in the first degree then give them a firing squad if convicted. If the government backs up the censure at every step of the way, the courts may have a chance to start reverting back to respectable institutions that serve the public rather than the loudest plaintiffs.
Click here or a puppy gets stomped!
This should place the burden on the USPTO or copyright office or whatever.. if all online companies must comply with this sort of precendence, then there must be a web service or something that will allow website the ability to search for trademarks. This of course, would have to be corporate backed, if there were to be anything resembling snappyness to the whole thing, which just makes the whole matter that much messier.
meh
Google lost a similar suit against Louis Vuitton a while back. They need to get their act together before they lose their sweetheart status.
The fine print on those adds blow my mind all the time. I believe it was an extra strength tylenol commercial that touted twice as much medicine as the leading brand, where the comparison was made against their own normal strength variety. To me, that's a bit like saying, Buy two BMWs because it's twice as much legroom as one BMW!
Never confuse volume with power.
I use Adwords to advertise for my company. I'm kind of surprised Geico had to resort to litigation. We have the same issue all the time. Google quickly and efficiently removes the ads that use our trademark when we follow their trademark complaint procedure.
What's to stop large companies trademarking all the words in their industry? If that happens, competitors couldn't place a Google Adwords advert using those terms, effectively shutting newcomers out of the market.
Sure, people could sue and counter-sue, but large companies have deeper pockets.
Hal Spacejock: Science Fiction with Nuts
I made that very joke half an hour ago and almost got modded down to hell as an overrated Troll.
What do you hope to achieve here?
I never spellcheck and I freely admit it. Save your karma for more worthwhile "lol erorrs" replies
According to the article, the ruling just says that Google can't use GEICO in the actual text of the ad. Trademark infringment is about confusion -- would having GEICO in the text of the ad lead someone to believe that it was an ad for GEICO? Quite possibly.
I have a website about upgrading Dell C-Series laptops and someone used my username "Stonent" as an Adword for a laptop repair service. I was irritated but after about a month the ad went away.
Well, in the first place, before reading comments I searched the page for 'good news' to see if someone else had already done this as it was the first thing I thought of -- there wasn't one so I did it.
In the second place, you got a +5 so why are you griping?
In the third place, mine runs closer to the geico ads.
> What do you hope to achieve here?
Achieve? Hey man, I'm just posting comments, you know? If it gets modded down, so be it. What's _your_ deal?
There is much cruelty in the universe, John.
Yeah, we seem to have the tour map.
So easy, even an Anonymous Coward could do it!
"Did you just hear what he said!"
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This sig has absolutely no significance and serves only to take up screen space and waste the time of the reader.
I was curious as to how you could forget to check the very first comment. It's okay.
I never spellcheck and I freely admit it. Save your karma for more worthwhile "lol erorrs" replies
But then again, people use Google like a phone book nowadays. Typing in Geico is a way to quickly find their web site. I myself do this quite a bit when searching for sites whose domain name approximates but is not a perfect match for the company name. In that way, it more closely approximates a dns search than a word search. In this light, I can understand the ruling.
I'm torn between the two viewpoints. It's a cultural issue, it seems to me. How is Google used? Is it more like a research tool (in which case I don't agree with the ruling) or a directory assistance tool (in which case I do)?
Yeah, I'd give 'em the CNet treatment. Google effectively gives away billions in free advertising because they'd prefer customer goodwill to having "bought" results. If I were google, I just might de-list companies that sue like that. Want to make sure you don't illegally use their copyright. As far as I can tell, the decision of the "Search King" case gives them that right.
I am kinda disgusted with insurance in general. I had Geico myself, and when vandals payed my Subaru a visit, I had to pay for the repair myself. The (expensive) cheapest plan I could get from them would not cover the damage.
So I switched insurance companies, bumped up the plan just to cover glass, and skimped on as much else as I could, to keep my insurance bill down. Now, I pay more than one of my coworkers does, and he has two cars and two people on the policy, and his policy covers damage and far more than my insurance plan does.
My uncle, who died a couple of months ago in a motorcycle accident which was not his fault, will not be receiving any money from the insurance companies. He's dead, and his family are missing that income, and no income from the insurance.
I own my car (finally), an 8 year-old partially chewed Subaru. It isn't even a nice car. This pisses me off. I wish I wasn't forced by law to pay money to a company which does nothing for that money I pay them. Health insurance is the same thing -- we all pay, but you can't use the service. Bastards.
Zhrodague.net - I do projects and stuff too.
They are geared towards certain words, but sometimes they just weird out and say things like "Free slashdot.* 100% guarantee--Download your own slashdot now!" I wouldn't be surprised if GEICO was complaining when it was just faulty substitution on the ad's part.
Maybe GEICO are confusing "sale of trademarks to competitors" with horrible fill-in-the-blank results like "Get your own free GEICO on Ebay! aff."...or did I miss something? I guess the two aren't mutex...
*maybe that exact word doesn't do that, but I digress.
You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
Google will most likely just change it terms of use, so that next time the advertiser will be sued instead of them.
The small print text adds in newspapers with the same kind of expressions do not get the newspaper sued. Probably Google should talk with the Sun or something for their terms of use.
My wife's sketchblog Blob[p]: Gastrono-me
This isn't about publicity, this is about competition and fair use of trademarks. They could do much better on commercials rather than lawyers. And until trademark law is changed, using them in your context without permission is a violation of trademark law. That's the crux of the case.
If you believe any publicity is good, then why did McDonald's clean up their act....why did Microsoft actually pay (if pitiable) attention to security? I suppose you code in VB, too...
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
Statutory Warning: Cnet, Register and Wired are TM of the respective owners, and were used to beef up the ranking and get increased attention.
There is a potential for a chilling effect on online ads. Perhaps GEICO has stiffed a few of its clients, for instance, and I might want to do a web site on that. Would I be prohibited from using text like "GEICO Stiffed Clients" in the text of the ad?
Good bye free speech...
Ruby Neural Evolution of Augmenting Topologies
Thank you!
Shouldn't these two rulings be fliped?
Imagine for a second that your a small business with a small store somewhere and on either side of your store are stores that rent out their space where companies can put huge ads for themselves. You would be losing customers that specificly came looking for you, if the bigger company could pay more they could get even more advertising.
Now whats wrong with using their name to compare your product in a advertisement? In America aren't we taught that competition is how a capitalistic society works? Then how can we compare and contrast between services if we can't even figure out the name of the other company?!
For most products mentioning your competetor is a Bad Thing(TM) because it also puts their brandname into the customers brain when it should just be yours
If you cannot keep politics out of your moderation remove yourself from the Mod Lottery.. NOW!
No, it's not a reversal. The court decided on one situation that had been left open by the earlier ruling.
Apparently, displaying competitors' ads in response to a query for a trademark is permissible; the court ruled, however, that the competitors' ads may not contain the trademarked query terms.
It seems to me that that strikes a pretty good balance. Allowing the trademarked query terms to appear in the ads carries too much risk for confusion, and it has little benefit for consumers.
So,is OK in response to a query for GEICO, butis not.
However, even under the current ruling, the target of the ad link can still do price comparisons between Acme and GEICO. Consumers really don't lose anything through this ruling; the court just came up with a simple rule by which targeted ads can be made a little clearer and less confusing.
The bad news is we just lost our lawsuit and now have to cough up damages and legal fees. The good news is I just saved a bunch on my car insurance!
I'm glad that ad had a good affect on you. I know you'll be going out to buy some coke... errr Pepsi... no Coke... errr... Just pick up a case of each.
-M
when you see the word 'Linux', drink!
Because you're not allowed to leverage other people's trademarks to sell your service. That's the point of trademarks.
So that's a problem with the business doing the advertising, I would think - not Google.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Actually, people are misunderstanding and mischaracterizing this ruling, which, in my opinion is flawed on a number of levels. First, the ruling has NOTHING to do with making a direct comparison in your AdWords Ad. It has to do with using the word GEICO as one of the words you pay for such that when someone types GEICO into the search bar, Your non-Geico AdWords Ad is displayed. Your ad in fact probably wouldn't say Geico at all.
Thus, the ruling relates not to the content of the advertising but the CONTEXT. This is a vital distinction. I faced a similar situation last year with AdWords. I was marketing a product called RU-21 for Hangovers. The most popular product in the category is called Chaser, and I was bidding on that word to have my ad displayed when someone searched Chaser. About a month after starting the campaign, I received a VERY UNPLEASANT and threatening letter from Chaser's corporate council...
What makes this a really important issue is that a large percentage of the really successful AdWords campaigns are predicated upon buying keywords that are the names of your competitor's products.
Google is undoubtedly going to appeal, but should they lose this will change the name of the game quite considerably both for the advertisers AND for Google
There is no "I" in B-O-R-G.
Or perhaps just plain wrong.
The basis for trademark law is the idea of unfair competition.
So let's start testing this.
It is legal to mention your competitor's trademarked name to say you are better than them, if it is true. And by true, that means proveably true. This is because it isn't unfair to state the truth. Not that if you can't prove it, because it is a matter of opinion (taste tests) or because you are playing tricks in your tests (like the paper towel strength tests), then you use "brand X".
It is legal to use a companies' trademarked name for non-commercial purposes. This is because it isn't competition since it isn't even a commmercial endeavour.
It is not legal to use a companies' trademarked name to lie about them (especially commercially), that would be unfair. Although it's pretty much unfair to lie about a company anyway even if you did avoid their trademark.
It is not legal to masquerade as another company. For example, if I make breakfast oat-rings, I cannot just print up a Cheerios box and put them in it so they sell better. That would be using the properties of General Mills against them. Every dollar they spent advertising or building a name would actually work for me too (and thus against them), I'm unfairly leveraging their efforts.
Now, what about just mentioning them to say you are like them (or perhaps unlike them), as in this case. It is possible to do this legally. For example, if I make an aftermarket HP-compatible ink cartridge I can use their name to indicate what it is. I can say "HP-compatible". Or even "compatible with HP printers" or "replaces HP cartridge #XXYY-035". However, there is an easy way to get in trouble in this case. If I made my box say "HP" covering 90% of the front of the box and my company name in tiny lettering in the corner or on the side, I would be masquerading as an HP product (at least long enough to get your attention), and again that would be unfair. See Negativland's U2 album http://foetusized.org/u2.html for example.
This can happen for regular advertising too. For example, Miller's ads could say "Bud Bud Bud Bud Bud Bud (Miller)" and basically associate themselves more strongly with Budweiser than their own name. That would be unfair too. It even could happen with a (normally legal) comparison ad, like the "better than" ads above. You could truthfully mention you are better than the other product, but spend so much time (or space) in your ad doing it that you are using their name to associate with yours. Obviously all of this is subject to some interpretation.
So, to go to the AdWords thing, is it illegal? Well, you are using a competitors term and using it commercially. So the competition part is there. But the question is, is it unfair to pop up when your competitor's trademarked term is entered. In my opinion, it probably is. In this case, your product's "box art" (the item that attracts people to look at your product/ad) is essentially 100% your competitor's trademarks. It's like that Negativland cover. When someone sees it from far away, it looks more like your compeitition than yourself; and by design. Information that says that this isn't really your competitor's product is available in your detailed ad, but isn't nearly as visible, and requires a more detailed examination, like hiding your name down in the corner or on the side of the box. Furthermore, every ad dollar your competitor spends is twisted to work against them by helping you. The more people learn their name and enter it into the search box, the more your name pops up.
Thus, in my opinion, buying adwords of your competitor's trademarks is probably unfair competition and thus illegal. And if judges think like me (I shudder to think) they have no choice but to rule against Google. I don't feel it should be illegal, so I would like Congress to step in and change the law in this case. Will they do it? Probably depends on who has the most lobbying money.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
You're wrong (in UK at least). Negative advertising is fine, as long as you tell the truth. Tesco (major grocery (and everything else) retailer) currently has price comparison adverts on TV saying how much cheaper they are and give prices for other main supermarkets.
Like others mention, "there's no such thing as bad publicity" (not true, I don't think); so mentioning 'Bud gives you less wind than Guinness' is never done.
As I read this thread, the ad displayed is for Google AdSense.
Why, oh why, didn't I take the Blue Pill?
Google won a case a while ago that established a precedent for their being able to allow trademarks to be sponsored as search terms. That was actually a summary judgement in this case. What they just lost was the question of whether or not advertisers could also include the trademark in the text of the ad itself. According to the only case law on the books, your usage of 'Chaser' was perfectly legit.
Is who farted at google?
...does this ruling then mean that if you were selling a program that could read/write or convert the data of a competing program, you can't even tell your prospective customers in an AdWords ad that you offered an easy way to migrate away from your competitor? That is what I read into the original linked article.
If that is true, then wow, what a way to lock in an existing customer base. Just "vigorously enforce" your trademarked name. No need to worry about direct competitors comparing themselves against you. Of course, the direct competitors still have the option to obliquely refer to your business, but this recent ruling seems to open up a grey area to me because it appears to stray from the original intent of trademark protection and start to add levels of indirection to protect. Just how indirect is indirect enough?
This ruling says it is illegal to mention a trademarked name in the ad copy itself if it violates the "likelihood of confusion" test. Initially, you would get slapped down under this doctrine if you infringed the trademark in such a manner that the infringement would mislead consumers. Now, the reports of these rulings (not the opinions themselves, which I'm still trying to find) seem to extend the protection of the trademark from misleading usage to saying protection is granted over any usage in ad copy whatsoever, regardless of context, misleading or not.
So if my grocery business shows an ad with a receipt from your business and right next to it is a receipt from your grocery business, and both show a purchase of the same brand type of soup, that is now illegal in the United States because of the trademark on your business' name?
I'm hoping that Brinkema's phrasing of "solely with regard to those sponsored links that use GEICO's trade marks in their headings or text." limits the expansion of precedent and only rules on the specific ads that used Geico's name in the ad copy. Need to read the court documents to know for sure. If someone knows the PACER case number, please post it up here, because I could not find the GEICO v. Google case in the Eastern Virginia U.S. District Court (there are four cases listed for Google, but none involve Geico).
So any company (e.g. overture or microsoft) could sue Google for running adwords which contain the phrase overture or microsoft. That's plainly ridiculous. What about Hoover. What about any of a million business names.
If I was Google, I'd immediately make sure that nobody could buy an ad containing words trademarked by my main competitors. And then I'd sue every single text-ad serving company that allows the word "google" to be sold by them.
Training monkeys for world domination since 1439
i work in this industry and i'm still somewhat confused about what this means so it's not really that surprising to me that people here are not sure what's going on. here's what we know:
1. it's okay to bid on "geico" as a keyword
2. it's not okay to use "geico" in your ad (unless you're geico) if geico has filed a trademark protection request with google
3. google has not allowed anyone to use "geico" in an ad (if they have filled out the paperwork) since april 2004
so here's the problem - google doesn't allow it but they still need to settle the case with geico or enter the penalty phase. is this just for damages incurred prior to april 2004? or does the decision mean that geico shouldn't have had to follow any procedures in the first place to prohibit others from using their trademark in ad copy?
no one seems to be answering those questions very clearly. the judge said that google can't do something that, well, it hasn't been doing for almost a year and a half.. so where's the beef? is it with google's current trademark protection procedure or with offenses prior to april 2004 when they instituted that policy?
Now if they could just do something about all those restaurants that give you Diet Pepsi when you ask for Diet Coke.
Insert witty sig here.
Oh how the mighty are falling.
I think you meant, "And yes, it's you," unless you were speaking of a you possesed by an it.
are you copping to a first post? ;-)
Yeah, I didn't see it until after posting my redundant comment and was promptly rewarded with a -1 for my trouble.
There is much cruelty in the universe, John.
Yeah, we seem to have the tour map.
How is this flaimbait? Just seems like all these laws are crimping google's style.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Adwords cost money... A lot of money for frequently searched terms. And this cost spirals upwards with the demand. In this system, the only protection a company like Geico has from a customer using their name to draw hits is to pay Google more to keep their site at the top of the list. It's not quite extortion, but it's kind of close...
Of course Geico would be under no obligation to opt in to this form of advertising, and a generic term like "car insurace" is fair game to give the best results to the highest bidder. But IMO a competitor using Geico's trademark to grab hits-- especially if they use it in a negative way-- is putting the gun to Geico's head and saying, "pay up."
Google could easily get around selling trademarked ad words by selling regular expressions. For example someone might buy
/gei.o/i
It would match on GEIKO but then again it would also match GEIJO
"Bud Bud Bud Bud Bud Bud (Miller)" isn't fraudlent. And the case of putting "HP" in huge letters on the front of your non-HP printer cartridge is borderline.
I think you've just missed the case where if you try to associate yourself with your competitors' trademarked name (as opposed to just pretending your are your competitors product) it isn't fraud, at least you aren't defrauding the consumer. The company who holds the trademark would claim injury though.
Anyway, these two circumstances are the most relevant here. Because they deal not with out and out counterfeiting but a confusion between two products.
We will see if this holds up, the confusion in the adwords case is a lot less clear cut and thus a lot more argueable than putting your oat-rings in a box that looks nearly identical to a Cheerios box.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
I open this story about Google Adsense, and what is the /. ad of the story? Google Adsense of course:
Providing advertising content relevant to the topic of the webpage.
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
That's a possible analysis. And it may even be the dominant one under present law. But increasingly I think that it is a bad approach, so please take this set of remarks as a discussion not of present law but as a critique of present law and a discussion of a possible basis for a variant law.
I feel like the US (and perhaps the world) has a set of laws that used to work well for small to medium-sized companies pre-Internet, but that increasingly those same laws are having different competitive effects in the modern world where all the money is being centralized in a few companies and market entrants are having a harder and harder time.
I'll give an example that is a real example I've seen happen. (I'm changing the names.) A small retail company, WidgetCo, was struggling to get some notice in advertising for the frobs it makes. A larger chain of retail outlets, GadgetCo, also makes frobs. GadgetCo kept appearing at the top of the list of stores in search lists even when the search term was just "WidgetCo". Why? Because GadgetCo made a "helpful" list of names and addresses of its competitors in its page. This means that since GadgetCo's pages get more hits (it being bigger) and since it mentions WidgetCo, it shows up. But the customers don't see WidgetCo first--it's buried way down there in tiny print with huge GadgetCo logos dominating the page.
What bothers me about this is that it means under the AdWords scheme, the owner of the trademark has to bid for the use of their own name. That means GadgetCo can outbid them and still show up top of the list. They can even buy several ads and push WidgetCo onto the next page. (Another way present law does not address these issues is not acknowledging the huge real effect of visibility. Being in a search result list, but not at the top, is often the same as not being there.)
This is a barrier to new entry into the market. It prefers entrenched vendors who are cash-rich and locks out cash-poor newcomers. That's bad for the market, not just for the vendor, which is why I care. I want competitors to enter because I don't want vendors getting too comfy. But as long as they can use practices like this to keep others out, new entrants are reduced and so my choice as a consumer is restricted to fat, comfy, anti-competitive big companies.
I don't mind having search terms like "something like Coke" turning up Pepsi (and other competitors with coke). I don't mind asking for Coke at a restaurant and having people who do not have Coke interpreting that as a request for similar beverages, so offering me Pepsi as a fallback. But I draw the line at asking for a Coke where it is available and finding that Pepsi is now paying people to say "Pepsi is really better. Are you sure you wouldn't want that instead?" Not only does that violate my sense of Truth and Right and Justice for the Coke trade name, it opens me to infinite ads from beverage servers from whom I just want to get the beverage I asked for!
Kent M Pitman
Philosopher, Technologist, Writer
yes, thank you for two dozen links to your site.
seriously, did you get rejected from google or what? you're the only one beating your drum and it is quite obvious.
On both counts. Using GEICO in the text of an ad without permission is wrong. Using GEICO to trigger display of the ad is wrong. Google is offering its Adwords customers the use of the trademark GEICO for commercial purposes. Google has no right to do that without GEICO's permission.