The search world has been closely watching and waiting for the ruling on Google’s sale of trademarks and brand names.
This has been a much discussed issue with many companies feeling disappointed that more cannot be done for them as they watch their competition outbid them on their own company name / keywords.
The European Union’s highest court has ruled in Google’s favour. The European Court of Justice has said that Google can sell trademarked terms through its Adword service. Although it is allowed to sell the terms it hasn’t been made completely exempt from liability, if it is found to have encouraged Adword buyers to actively engage in trademark infringement it can still be held responsible.
Maybe a case will be won in the future changing the Adwords landscape but for now advertisers will just need to ensure they can protect their brand the best they can.
So with this in mind there are several things you can do:
- Always ensure you set up a “brand” adgroup containing your company name, company domains, common mispellings
- Within this, set up your product names, strap lines, anything that users may search for
- Although you can also bid on your competitors terms, why not try and do a gentleman’s agreement with your main competitors. No one wins when it comes to bid wars.