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US Court Orders Company to Use Negative Keywords
A US court has ordered a firm to utilize negative adwords in their internet advertising. "Orion Bancorp took Orion Residential Finance (ORF) to court in Florida over ORF's use of the word 'Orion' in relation to financial services and products, arguing that it had used the term since 2002 and had held a trade mark for it since then. [...] The judge in the case went further, though, restraining ORF from 'purchasing or using any form of advertising including keywords or "adwords" in internet advertising containing any mark incorporating Plaintiff's Mark, or any confusingly similar mark, and shall, when purchasing internet advertising using keywords, adwords or the like, require the activation of the term "Orion" as negative keywords or negative adwords in any internet advertising purchased or used.'"
Orion's overrated anyway. They should change their name to BoÃtes.
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This is unfortunate. The courts should have no jurisdiction over someone's stupidity. Using the name "Orion" in your company name is just asking for trouble. It's such a popular and recognizable term. OB and ORF shouldn't be surprised when someone steps on their toes once in awhile. OB acts like it invented the term despite the fact that it's been around for thousands of years.
And then with the courts stepping in and forcing ORF to not use the term in their advertising is playing favorites to OB. I can only imagine that this decision puts a serious dent in ORF's bottom line. If ORF was calling themselves "Kleenex" or some other brand name, that would be understandable, but "Orion?" Come on. OB shouldn't be crying foul when they should've known there would be confusion with the name "Orion." They need to grow up and play ball the old fashion way: may the best man win.
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Having made that finding the court is quite reasonably penalizing ORF. It is quite reasonable for an injunction to penalize ORF after they clearly took advantage of Orion's reputation.
And any company that does not show up in court when served with papers is likely to find that they end up saddled with onerous terms in any case.
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When I first read the post, for some reason I thought "negative keywords" meant they had to advertise under keywords that people wouldn't want, like "really bad financial service" or "shady loan company" or "housing lemons".
1) Company must now register and pay for the keywords "Dummy", "Poopiehead", "Fartsniffer", and "Boogerbrains"
or
2) Company must now register keywords that, when combined with their intended keywords, nullify each other out, like Semantic anti-matter.
or
3) Company may only use keywords that have a value less than zero.
Under normal circumstances I'd agree completely, but since ORF didn't show up at court, their odds of winning an appeal are slim to none.
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the judge specifically said "internet advertising". and s/he used the phrase "keywords, adwords, or the like". to suggest that the ruling applies only to google adwords is flagrant trolling. i don't know how anyone could possibly interpret the statement in the ruling as being constrained to google.
sheesh. how this got modded "interesting" is beyond me.
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You can hire Maddox to be your spokesperson.
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I mean, "apple" and "America" are pretty generic terms, but I suspect if I started a company called "Apple Microcomputers" and "Mortgage Bank of America" I'd get some phone calls real soon, and they wouldn't be from customers.
Ah well, they should just change their name to "YA Bankrupt Fly-By-Night Mortgage Broker" and be done with it.
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I doubt this sets any precedent. This is not new or novel or even unexpected. The only news for nerds here is the judge explicitly calling out search advertising. Otherwise, it's entirely predictable (the way laws and courts should be).
The Orions had both overlapping goods/services AND they had overlapping sales regions.
Golden Dragon restaurant in downtown L.A. does not compete with Golden Dragon in Manhattan. There is no confusion arising from the re-use of that name. Now, if there were a Golden Dragon *chain* restaurant, the rules may change. But not much. First come, first serve, as far as that trade mark and the area it is used in. You can't form a chain called "Golden Dragon restaurants" and try to push that Manhattan restaurant out (but you can try to buy it).
Hence, Golden Dragon in Decatur IL has no standing to sue Golden Dragon in Kissimee FL for trademark infringement.
Once case recently illustrating this was Trump's trademark of "You're Fired" in classes 9 and 16 (I believe; not sure if there were other classes also) nationwide; there was a pottery shop of the same name in Chicago that sold goods in classes 9 and 16 prior to Trump's trademark application. They ended up settling for an undisclosed amount, but basically the pottery shop owner already had the trademark (though unregistered) in Chicago, so Trump was out of luck.
To get back to the Golden Dragon example, someone trying to register "Golden Dragon" nationwide (say, if they were starting a chain) would need to negotiate with restaurants of that name in order to supplant their existing trademark.
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