2 min read

Adwords PPC Basics – Adwords Trademark & Copyright Policy

Picture of Honcho Honcho : Jan 7, 2011 9:15:03 AM

Welcome to another PPC Basics blog, this guide will take you through the Adwords rules and guidelines surrounding copyrighting and trademarking. Protecting a brand or products identity is a very important part of any successful business. Because trademarking is such an important subject Adwords has strict rules and guidelines surrounding the creation of ads and bidding on trademarked terms. <

Google have recently updated there policies in regards to using copyrighted terms within ad text. To prevent getting into any trouble follow these simple guidelines and you shouldn’t have any problems. To be able to use a trademark within your advert you must answer yes to the following questions: 1) Is the use of your trademark in a descriptive or generic way and not in reference to the trademark owner? 2) Does your website sell or promote the goods or services of the trademark? 3) Does your landing page clearly reflect the sale of the trademarked product or service?

Trademark Example

If you’re answering yes to all of the above questions and your adverts are getting rejected then you need to receive approval from the trademark owner. This can be done by speaking to the trademark owner and getting them to approve you. The latest and most talked about case of Adwords trademark infringement was the Louis Vitton Vs Google court case. Famous luxury brand Louis Vitton took Google to the European Court of justice with claims that Google Adwords were illegally letting their competitors purchase keywords relevant to their trademarks. Google won the seven year court case but were forced to change their policy’s surrounding trademarks to make the rules more clear. Please follow these links for more cases of Adwords trademark infringement. http://www.peakpositions.com/seonews/geico-vs-google.htm http://www.thedomains.com/2010/03/07/google-adwords-trademark-case-dropped-after-the-plaintiff-rescuecom-gets-sued-for-doing-the-same-thing/ http://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/eu-rules-adwords-not-trademark-infringement/ So what do you do if your trademarked term is being used? If you spot an advert or multiple adverts that are using your trademark but not selling your goods then there is a process you must follow to get these adverts removed. A specific complaint means that Google will investigate a trademark term in specific adverts only. With a specific complaint you will be required to provide the exact URLs in question. To get a more broad investigation for multiple adverts and companies then you need to file a general complaint. With general complaints Google will look through all ads that correspond with the trademark term not specific URLs. For more information and Google’s official policies surrounding trademark and copywriting then follow this link http://adwords.google.com/support/aw/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=6118 Do you know of any other court cases that may have not turned out so good for Google? Stay tuned for more PPC basics blogs including keyword targeting and account structure.