Google To Be Sued in UK For Trademark-Linked Ads

nuke-alwin writes "Channel 4 news in the UK is reporting that Google will be sued by Lastminute.com for the way it sells advertising. Adverts from competitors will now be displayed when searching for some trademarks. Google says consumers will benefit. Some trademarks become so familiar that all similar products are known by the trademark name: Coke and Hoover, for example. I think searching for these kinds of words should allow competitors to advertise their similar products."

Comments

Abuse of what trademarks are for...

[raehl]

Trademarks are to identify the source of goods. Trademarks are not to protect your good from competition. Nor are the copyrights to protect your trademark from use by others outside of identifying the source of goods.

Re:Abuse of what trademarks are for...

[allcar]

You're quite right. Looking further into the article, Tesco (a major supermarket - think WalMart for the UK) is considering action, too.

In a statement, Tesco also said that it is "disappointed at Google's recent changes to their trademark policy as we think that consumers are the people who will be disadvantaged." Now, what kind of screwy logic leads them to think that when searching for Tesco and being presented with ads for a bunch of supermarkets could lead to consumers being disadvantaged? How thick do they think consumers are?
This has got to be to the consumers advantage. It lets us know what other companies operate in the same domain. OK, for supermarkets, this is pretty obvious, but less so for, say, Tool Hire. If I want to know about tool hire companies, I could type HSS and get a list of relevant companies, simply because I know of one. Poor example, as I could have just searched on "Tool Hire", but you take my point, I hope.

Re:Abuse of what trademarks are for...

[mattbee]

Yes - trademarks are to identify the source of goods, and anyone misrepresenting their goods as yours may be guilty of passing off at least under UK law. In our very early days we had a competitor of ours place a ads on searches for our company name, with the text shouting about similar services without mention of ours or the competitor's name. We objected to Google, and they took the competitor's ads away.

Google offer a search service and presented adverts for a competitor when customers searched for our company name. I didn't feel that Google's presentation (i.e. the word "Sponsored links" in small print) made clear enough to potential searchers that the advert was unrelated to our company, and there was a risk of a consumer thinking that this competitor was in fact us. If it had said "These advertisements may be unrelated to the trademark XXX" in clearer text, I'm not sure I would have had the same objection. I think it was a mild attempt at passing off, so I'm glad Google had this policy in place.

Re:Abuse of what trademarks are for...

[TheRaven64]

There are two cases here. One is that you search for a product and get adverts for competitors products. This seems absolutely fine to me. The other is that you get a product and get an advert which appears to be someone selling this product but is, in fact, a competitor (or something completely unrelated). This is absolutely not fine, and is something I have experienced with Google search results several times in the past. Had I been the owner of the trademark, I would have been obliged to sue Google (and probably eBay, who is responsible for many of these) or risk losing the trademark.

Re:Coke and Hoover?

[YttriumOxide]

I think "hoover" tends to be quite common in some areas of the UK, but primarily amongst the older generation now.

You're quite right about "Xerox" and "Kleenex" though. I'd throw in to the list "Band Aid", "Post It" and "Biro".

It all depends on where you live though - different countries, and even different locations within countries are more or less likely to use these. For example, in Japan there's "almost" a verb for copying ("xeroxing") based on the name Ricoh (roughly "Ricohpying"). Or in some less developed countries, the world "Nescafe" is a synonym for "coffee".