Trademarks as keywords
As the Invisible Fence Guide (soon to be renamed) proves, keywords that are trademarks can cause you some difficulties. First, though, let's see what a trademark actually is. Here is how the United States Patent and Trademark Office defines trademark and the related term service mark:
“A trademark includes any word, name, symbol, or device, or any combination used, or intended to be used, in commerce to identify and distinguish the goods of one manufacturer or seller from goods manufactured or sold by others, and to indicate the source of the goods. In short, a trademark is a brand name.”
“A service mark is any word, name, symbol, device, or any combination, used, or intended to be used, in commerce, to identify and distinguish the services of one provider from the services provided by others, and to indicate the source of the services.”
In other words, trademarks (I'll use the term inclusively from now on to refer to service marks as well) uniquely identify goods and services. So the trademark Invisible Fence identifiers a pet containment system marketed by Invisible Fence, Inc. and its dealers. Most brand names are trademarks, of course.
Aside: if you're looking for some good information about trademarks, check out these articles about trademarks and domain names by intellectual property lawyer Ivan Hoffman. Well worth your time in reading.
Trademark owners must defend their trademarks in order to protect them. If the owner sees someone infringing their trademark, they must act to stop the infringement. This is what the Invisible Fence people are doing with me, of course.
I'm going to have more to say about this shortly, but I thought I'd leave you with an interesting tidbit. As you probably know, Louis Vuitton is luxury handbag maker whose designs are often counterfeited. Louis Vuitton does, however, work hard to protect its brand name, and that includes suing Google for letting advertisers place bids against Louis Vuitton trademarks. Contrast these two queries, for example:
Those links open new browser windows. Look closely at the right side of each window. The US window is full of ads. The French window shows no ads. Why? Because Google lost a lawsuit brought by Louis Vuitton in France in 2004. Interesting, eh?
Eric Giguere is the contextual advertising expert who wrote Make Easy Money with Google and Uncommon AdSense. You can read this blog by mail if it's more convenient for you, just send a blank email to memwg-blog@aweber.com to subscribe.
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