Trademark Bidding Development
The use of trademarks within search marketing has, of course, been a hot topic for a number of years now. Unfortunately, the actual case law on this topic is limited and inconsistent. Google’s stance is that one can advertise using trademarked terms as part of one’s key phrase, but cannot use them in the copy of the advertisement itself.
Language software firm Rosetta Stone wants to push things to the next level by suing competitors for using “Rosetta Stone” as part of their keywords. Their choice of defendant is unusual as most plaintiffs have gone after Google and their deep pockets. Perhaps Rosetta Stone realized that by instead naming their competitors in the lawsuit they would not have to face Google’s army of lawyers.
While I’m certainly not a lawyer, I believe that Rosetta Stone faces a tough road with this suit. To prevail, they will have to prove that users were likely to be mislead or confused by the advertisement. This seems like a high bar for them to get over.
I suspect the real goal is to simply get the competitors to cease advertising on keywords with Rosetta Stone’s trademarks in them. Their hope may be that their competitors quickly fold in the face of a lawsuit. It’s quite unlikely that we get any useful case law out of this.
