legal issues on using company names in adwords

I have taken over a PPC campaign on adwords, and we have received an email from someone requesting we pull one of our ads. I was wandering what the legal implications are for this ad/request?

Our company offers SMS software for businesses. There is a company in the UK who offer a similar product, and when you type their name into google our ad appears with their name on it saying

"considering [company name]? then you may also be interested in us.... etc etc"

If we do not pull the ad where do we stand legally - are we breaching any copyright laws? As I said I have taken over this campaign and did not put this ad in place but it brings us a few clicks a month, I just wondered if anyone has any advice on this sort of issue and what is the best way to proceed. Obviously we don't want to annoy anyone, but there are currently others who use OUR company name in a similar way too.

Any comments/advice much appreciated. thanks

As president of Rolodex Electronics, I chased many a company (AT&T and IBM for example) for using our company name Rolodex in advertisements. Legally, if they do not defend their copyright on every infringement that comes to their attention they stand a chance of their copyright protection being set aside by the courts, i.e. the name becomes part of the public domain. There cannot be a selective defense on copyright. It is all or nothing.

As a side note, my understanding is that this also includes defense of patents, i.e. defend it or lose it.

That was my understanding also about copyrights also.

Could be a competitor trying to run you off.

Don't respond to an email. Tell them to send it in writing with notarization.

In my opinion, if they were credible you would have gotten a letter from a lawyer. Even then I still would not stop until I saw
valid copyright document.