Should Bidding on Trademark Terms in AdWords Be Illegal?

Jason Katzenback — Sat, 16 May 2009 21:47:35 +0000

If you participate in AdWords at all, you should know that Google allow’s for advertisers to bid on trademark terms, meaning when someone types in a specific trademark term, your ad would show up in the sponsored results.

What advertisers are not allowed to do is use the trademark terms in the adcopy itself but as for having the ad come up for that term, that is not an issue.

Personally for me, I see no issue with it. The way I look at it is no different then how radio, television or a local newspaper is. As long as the adcopy is within the rules, the time and place it appears is only limited by the amount of money the advertiser wants to spend.

Well if you asked Audrey Spangenberg, she would have a completely different view point on this.

What happened is Audrey Spangenberg typed in “FirePond” (the name of her small software company) and she was not impressed with what showed up. Her company website (http://www.firepond.com/) appeared in the top position for organic listings but above it were competitors and this caused Ms Spangenberg to become furious.

Now, this is not the first time this has caused someone to get furious over just such an issue (Gieco & American Airlines) … and I am sure Google will see more of it in the future.

Whats more, Google is actually expanding its policy to bid on trademark terms to more than 190 countries (ohh I could just imagine the expression on Ms Spangenberg’s face).

Now when it comes to trademark laws, from what i can tell there is nothing that can really be done about this and to be honest I think that is a good thing… but I am sure there are plenty of lawyers who want a crack at trying to fight for it anyway.

Here is how I personally look at it.

As a consumer, if I was shopping for a specific product, I want to have both the product come up and the competition. That is the beauty of online shopping, you can look at different options and let the better product win.

If it was to become law that Google would be controlled as to who they can allow to pay for advertising, then our search experience would suffer but I also have to ask the question… would that mean that they would have to control what appears as organic listings also?

I mean, what happens if I have a competing product and I write a comparison review and my page shows up as number one?

Is this not what search engines are all about?

I mean the idea is to show us relevant results and is not a direct competitor completely relevant?

I 100% agree with not being able to use trademark terms in your ads, this causes the potential consumer to be mislead but when it comes to be able to have your ad show up when your trademark term is typed into Google… that is something I believe should stay as being allowed.

So whats your opinion?

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John Cow dot Com » google trademark lawsuit

Should Bidding on Trademark Terms in AdWords Be Illegal?