Pay-Per-Click Legal Issues...

It was brought up in a thread recently about Pay-Per-Click and trademark issues (ie competitors using your company's name to advertise in search results)...

The only real culpability/liability for Google and/or your competitors is known as Trademark Dilution. http://www.bitlaw.com/trademark/dilution.html has a fairly good wrap up of this set of laws, but basically it requires that the distinctive quality or unique value of your trademark be diluted due to competitor or non-competitor usage. It is usually limited to well established trademarks of value. It would also require that the competitor DISPLAY your trademark, not simply bid on its words.

If you, for example, have a trademarked term on an industry leading product (or near) and another group uses your trademark for financial benefit in a non-comparative or non-transformative(not art) manner, this can be a case for trademark dilution.

In most cases, PPC programs prevent the display of trademarked terms in the advertisment itself unless you are the owner of the trademark. There is positively no infringement, though, if that term is not actually used in the displayed advertisement.

If I bid on the term Coca-Cola and I am Pepsi, I can either (1) not use the term Coca-Cola in the advert, (2) Compare my product to Coca-Cola (Pepsi beats Coke 2-1 in taste tests) or (3) Make a pretty, "transformative" image regarding that trademark and pray to God that a Judge will consider it Art.

Otherwise, it is a crime.


Hope that helps out a bit.