Google To Be Sued in UK For Trademark-Linked Ads 235
nuke-alwin writes "Channel 4 news in the UK is reporting that Google will be sued by Lastminute.com for the way it sells advertising. Adverts from competitors will now be displayed when searching for some trademarks. Google says consumers will benefit. Some trademarks become so familiar that all similar products are known by the trademark name: Coke and Hoover, for example. I think searching for these kinds of words should allow competitors to advertise their similar products."
Abuse of what trademarks are for... (Score:5, Informative)
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My first arguement would be
Is it illegal for a salesman at a department store to a different brand product than you initially were looking for?
I went to JB Hifi and asked for which iPod (trademarked) is the best. Does it have FM Radio? Are they best value?
Is it illegal to direct the consumer to an iRiver or Samsung player?
Is it illegal for a used car salesman to sell you a Toyota when you ask for an inferior Mitsubishi?
Re:Abuse of what trademarks are for... (Score:5, Insightful)
This has got to be to the consumers advantage. It lets us know what other companies operate in the same domain. OK, for supermarkets, this is pretty obvious, but less so for, say, Tool Hire. If I want to know about tool hire companies, I could type HSS and get a list of relevant companies, simply because I know of one. Poor example, as I could have just searched on "Tool Hire", but you take my point, I hope.
Re:Abuse of what trademarks are for... (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem is that trademarks have become a form of property, rather than a mechanism to avoid misleading consumers.
Re:Abuse of what trademarks are for... (Score:4, Insightful)
One company spends a fortune building a brand image and is so successful that it is *their* product's name that is the first thing you think of when you think of the generic product, and yet you think it's ok to use produce results for their competitors too?
I'm not sure I said that too clearly, but I hope you get the idea.
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Re:Abuse of what trademarks are for... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Abuse of what trademarks are for... (Score:4, Informative)
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> think of when you think of the generic product, and yet you think it's ok to use produce results for their competitors too?
It's ok. I want a vacuum cleaner. I google for Hoover, and see other sorts of vacuum cleaner. Because, although Hoover is a type of vacuum cleaner, there are others. Having a trademark doesn't mean other, unconnected companies - especially t
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In the UK, yes. But it didn't get verbed in the US, so we don't say "Hooverin' the carpet". Here, it's just a brand of vacuum cleaner. (And in Japan, the brand name "Hotchkiss" became the word for "stapler".)
Now does anyone know where I can get a new Refrigerator(R) brand, uh... food cooler cabinet?
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Yeah, well you also said this:
So if I may be so bold as to go by what you said, instead of what you meant, then Threni's example using Hoover is spot on.
To make it quite clear, you originally said: it is *their* product's name that is the first thing you think of when you think of the generic product which the example of Hoover is a case of exactly this thing happening.
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Re:Abuse of what trademarks are for... (Score:4, Insightful)
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As apt a description of what's wrong with Microsoft, General Motors and a hundred other major corporations as anything else I've heard lately.
Re:Abuse of what trademarks are for... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Abuse of what trademarks are for... (Score:4, Insightful)
This is what is often missed and it happened to me. I made a search for "serious magic" (a video f/x software). The first link on Google was paid, and it appeared to from the makers of the said software so I clicked on it. Imagine my confusion when I realized the site I landed on was a competitor's. This is really not OK in my book.
Re:Abuse of what trademarks are for... (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem is that Google is allowing deceptive advertising in its results. If they allow one company to pass themselves off as another then they will be sued and they will lose.
Re:Abuse of what trademarks are for... (Score:4, Insightful)
You shouldn't sue Google, you should sue the company misrepresenting themselves.
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IANAL, but as far as I know (at least here in the USA you can use such statements in advertisements, as long as you include the or ® mark.
However, advertisers don't like to do that usually, because, in the spirit of "any publicity is good publicity", they try to avoid mentioning their competition by name.
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Re:Abuse of what trademarks are for... (Score:5, Insightful)
Google offer a search service and presented adverts for a competitor when customers searched for our company name. I didn't feel that Google's presentation (i.e. the word "Sponsored links" in small print) made clear enough to potential searchers that the advert was unrelated to our company, and there was a risk of a consumer thinking that this competitor was in fact us. If it had said "These advertisements may be unrelated to the trademark XXX" in clearer text, I'm not sure I would have had the same objection. I think it was a mild attempt at passing off, so I'm glad Google had this policy in place.
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First result (paid) on Google, is
Serious Magic
fxhome.com/compositelab Special Effects On Your Desktop Simple Powerful Software. Try Now!
However, when I clicked on the link, I realized the site had nothing to do with the software I was looking for.
If I were the maker of Serious Magic (they've been bought by Adobe) I would have been pissed off too. I don't have anything against FXHome, b
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That ad should be OK in response to a search for "serious magic" if it said:
or even
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I don't see the problem. Trademark law merely doesn't allow people to misrepresent the origins of goods and services. If people go to the web site and it's clear that it's not your company, how have your goods or services been misrepresented?
You seem to be operating under the false assumption that you own all the tra
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Trademark law merely doesn't allow people to misrepresent the origins of goods and services. If people go to the web site and it's clear that it's not your company, how have your goods or services been misrepresented?
You seem to be operating under the false assumption that you own all the traffic that your trademark generates. You do not. If I put up a "[your trademark] sucks" web site, you don't own that traffic and you don't have a right to prevent people from finding that site.
There are a couple of points there:
1) Trademark law includes specific provisions to protect the reporting of and criticism of trademarked goods or the companies they represent. That's why your alicious-sucks.com website is OK.
2) Consider the search engine like a shop-front. It advertises the business to people, maybe shows some products, is used to get people in the door (ie to visit your site in the search engine case). Putting a competitors trademark name on your shopfront misrepresents your business. Si
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My gripe is with my competitors who are paying for this to happen, not Google in the first instanc
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That is the crux of it, google is not misrepresenting thier service as yours, the company who paid for the ad is doing the misrepresenting. Clause 6 of google's advertising terms and conditions [google.com.au] as it pertains to trademarks is no different to what one would expect to find when taking out an advert in print, TV or radio.
In your example google acted as I would expect any other responsible adverstising service to act and helped you to police your trademark when
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It's still not trademark infringement unless the ad by itself is infringing.
they better sue the phone book companies as well. (Score:3, Insightful)
boo fucking hoo.
Re:they better sue the phone book companies as wel (Score:4, Interesting)
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You look up "Tesco" in business pages. Alongside is an ad for "Sainsburys". No harm there in my book. But then that's partially because we know that Sainsburys is different.
How about if the company was called "PeterMark" (ahem, measuring services). Next to it an ad says "looking for measuring services try
Is that OK. I think so, the "PeterMark" trademark owner* would probably be a bit pissed however.
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* I've assumed the name is distinctive
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Well, it's kind of hard to organize like this with the printed page. Too many combinations of "searches" for specific trade marked names. However, with dynamically generated content backed by a database it's a breeze.
I bet if the yellowpages had an online site, they'd do the exact same thing.....oh wait, they do: http://www.yellowpages.com/nationwide/name_search/wal-mart?search_mode=all&search_terms=wal+mart [yellowpages.com]
Look at the right side of the page, a long list of "Related Businesses".
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For A Ransom of...$1. (Score:3, Funny)
Are the trademarks in question really generic? (Score:4, Insightful)
I've been reading the Wikipedia on genericized trademarks [wikipedia.org] (off-topic: shouldn't it be "generized"?) and it doesn't give too much information about the process of certifying the genericity of a trademark: it seems to happen per se if the trademark owner doesn't take steps to avoid genericization, and sometimes even if steps are taken. Would anybody please point me to a better reference?
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I don't think that's relevant; it's evidence for the argument, not a direct part of it.
The argument presented says that such adverts are useful because many people who search for a brand are actually looking for the product, not the brand.
This is also not relevant to whether they're legal. Given my understanding of trademark law, they are, but of course that carries the usual weight of an IANAL comment on slashdot :)
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Given my understanding of trademark law, they are, but of course that carries the usual weight of an IANAL comment on slashdot :)
On the other hand, the UK is pretty much in the US's back pocket these days - you know, the one round the back, in the middle. Strangely brown, and worn.
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As it happens I am from the UK. But UK and US trademark law are very similar AFAIK. (In fact I'm not aware of any major differences anywhere in the world).
Wikipedia [wikipedia.org] has some detail but to be honest I'm not all that interested :)
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On-topic: The only way I can see that they're complaining is if you search for lastminute holidays [google.com] or even just lastminute [google.com]. You then get various holiday agents in the adverts because they are selling adverts for holidays that are available at the last minute.
While it's potentially piggy-backing their trad
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"Known" is not "marketed" (Score:3, Interesting)
"Known" in informal usage is one thing. Actually marketed that way is quite another. Would you expect to see Pepsi brand "coke" or Dyson brand "hoovers" being advertised?
If you allow your trademark to become a generic term, then eventually you may lose the protection it provides. Trademarks are defend-it-or-lose-it. I say may lose because AFAIK this particular principle, of using a trademarked term as a generic term in a commercial search, is a new legal area. So at least we know that a lot of lawyers will make a lot of money out of it. Which is nice.
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http://www.aspirin.com/faq_en.html [aspirin.com]
Protect a trademark or lose it.
Robots.txt (Score:2)
The pages at Google.com are google's property so I fail to see how this lawsuit can go anywhere.
~Dan
Oh please... (Score:2, Interesting)
If I put "lastminute.com" into Google, they've got about the top 6 links in the search page. The URL of their competitors is clearly shown elsewhere.
Are lastminute.com in trouble? Have they got SCO-level management fighting against the reality than anyone can set up what they do (and a lot of their site isn't "last minute" anyway).
You know what's funny? The most likely impact of this move is that more people will link to this slashdot article and drive this up the main inde
Again? (Score:3, Insightful)
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Imagine if a supermarket put up a big advertising board at the front of the store with pepsi branding and trademarks, but underneath it
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When I google for lastminute.com people have placed bids on that keyword to present relevant information. Note, this is their definition of relevant, not mine as the consumer but we'll ignore that. They have
"Internet" does not make something different (Score:2)
Think about that for a second.
Now, lets take it step further. Lets say I make a searchable yellow pages. It quite literally searches scans of the yellow pages and pulls up the pages that might have what you are looking for. You're going to see ads for competitors when you use trademarked words.
Of course though, this is in the UK, whose adver
Squarely on Google's side on this one (Score:2)
Google: keep it up, I'm rooting for you.
lastminute.com and Auto Trader: FY.
Suggestion (Score:2)
Not new (Score:2)
How far will this go? (Score:2)
If they win against Google, I wonder how much farther they will go?
For example, if I go to Amazon and search for some specific, branded, product, Amazon includes on that product's page a list of products that people shopping for that product bought. These are often competing products. Will the trademark owners object to this?
They might shoot themselves in the foot if Google. (Score:2, Interesting)
Personally, I do think it is wrong to bombard someone searching for a JohnWidget with SallyImitation Ads. Phrased another way, "If you don't
Google can do what they like... (Score:2)
[drinks Coke from a classic bottle, holding the label to the camera] *contented sigh* [pops an Anadin] *instant pain relief face*
Better. Oh. Time to take the kids shopping. L8r.
[grabs basketball, pulls on the Nike's making sure not to obscure the cameras' view of the swoosh]...
I know it's not a popular opinion (Score:2, Interesting)
But I agree in part. If you search for the term 'Coke' and 'Pepsi' comes in second in the advertiser list, what does that mean? It means Pepsi is benefiting from the Coke trademark. They are in essence advertising their product using the trademark. Maybe google isn't the one to go after though, maybe it would be Pepsi for paying to advertise their product using the Coke brand name. I see no problem if Google returns Pepsi.com anywhere in the search results (even on top).
Think about it this way. Wo
public interest (Score:2)
So, advertisting your product in response to a search for a competitor's trademark is in the public interest and falls within the intent of trademark law, as long as you don't misrepresent yourself as the trademark holder.
There really should be no problem (Score:2)
There _may_ be some dillution aspect to this, however, if Google doesn't mix and match brand names in search results, I really don't see a problem here.
The best analogy I can think of is in a store.
If I asked a shop keeper, do you carry brand X, and he responded, "No, but we do carry brand Y," that's is clearly not infringement.
If the shop keeper says, "Yes we do have brand X over here, but have you c
simple solution: identify (Score:2)
[official site] Tesco Supermarkets
[other site] Cheaper than Tesco!
This could work based on domain names, data mining, and/or a
Google could also allow personalization, letting people choose whether to see the official/competitor's sites and in what order, as well as letting users block lists of trademarks they never want to see (e.g., Coca Cola, Nike, Microsoft, whatever).
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Re:Coke and Hoover? (Score:4, Insightful)
I've heard the term 'hoovering' used to describe vacuuming. I think over in Englad it was more widely used that way. (That is if TV has actually taught me something.)
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Re:Coke and Hoover? (Score:5, Informative)
I think "hoover" tends to be quite common in some areas of the UK, but primarily amongst the older generation now.
You're quite right about "Xerox" and "Kleenex" though. I'd throw in to the list "Band Aid", "Post It" and "Biro".
It all depends on where you live though - different countries, and even different locations within countries are more or less likely to use these. For example, in Japan there's "almost" a verb for copying ("xeroxing") based on the name Ricoh (roughly "Ricohpying"). Or in some less developed countries, the world "Nescafe" is a synonym for "coffee".
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
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We say "to xerox something".
Likewise, we use "adidas" for any sneakers, including constructs like "I bought some Puma adidas"
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Ah yep - forgot about "Glad Wrap" - thanks for reminding me of that one.
And for reference, "Xerox" is pronounced something like "Zeroks".
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In other words something almost but not quite entirely unlike coffee.
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Actually "Band Aid" as a generic term is mostly from Australia/New Zealand. I'm pretty sure "Xerox" is mostly America and non-English speaking countries that have adopted it (see posts above from Russian, Polish and Romanian people)
Also, another one that another replier (zsau) pointed out and I somehow forgot about is "Glad Wrap" - very common in New Zealand at least, and I believe elsewhere also.
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Don't forget "Dumpster".
Actually, I'm not familiar with that one, so I guess it's something from outside of my experience (US only perhaps?). But okay, if it's common, then sure! I guess it may be the US equivalent of "Collex" in Australian English, which is just the same (a kind of large outdoor wheeled rubbish bin - "Collex" is also a brand name that gets used to refer to ANY large outdoor wheeled rubbish bins).
I'm not sure how clear I am making myself, but simply put, "last minute" is a relatively common phrase in the States, and if it is similarly common in the UK, I doubt LastMinute.com will be able to do much in court to give themselves a victory.
We're shocking close to being back on topic here ;) But don't worry, you were perfectly clear (to me at least)
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http://english2american.com/dictionary/h.html [english2american.com]
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http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/VAX [reference.com]
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Coke.. okay, maybe. Hoover? I never hear anyone say, "go get the Hoover."
No, they'd say "go and get the hoover".
I do hear people say, "thats a nice Ipod", when I have a Sansa. Even more frequently: Kleenex being substituted for tissue, or, "will you xerox this for me?". There are much better examples than Hoover
I have never heard anyone use iPod, Kleenex or Xerox generically. On the other hand, saying anything but "I'm hoovering the carpet" to refer to hoovering the carpet is odd to me. If you say "vacuuming" it sounds like the stilted language used in TV adverts to avoid mentioning trademarks. No one would actually say it. The same goes for "cola" instead of the everyday "coke".
See? Not everyone is from your neck of the woods.
Mod parent up, as they say... (Score:2)
It's not all that easy to lose a trademark -- Google is still in place, as is Xerox -- but the risk is there and it has happened, cf. the other examples above. In this case, if Google treats a search for "Tesco" as a search for "supermarket", and Tesco doesn't protest, Tesco is probably implicitly agreeing that their name is a generic name for a supermarket:
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Sorry but you have problems.
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Sure, but the end result is the same, no?
Not in all circumstances. Rarely, in fact.
For example, slavery was once legal. Does that mean it's also a moral practice?
Marijuana is illegal. Does that mean possessing it is morally wrong ("evil")?
This is called "appeal to authority [wikipedia.org]" and is a logical fallacy. Laws should not be the moral barometer for a person. Certainly, they should help assist in forming moral standpoints, but since laws originate with people, and people have the capacity to do evil, laws may not be good 100% of the tim