Search Engine Advertising Sets Off Trademark Lawsuit
A legal complaint filed by NameSafe against LifeLock raised an interesting issue yesterday. Are trademarked names legally protected when it comes to online keyword advertising.
The lawsuitwas launched in Tennessee, where NameSafe is headquartered, and alleges various violations of Trademark Laws In a Namesafe press release CEO David Ridings said
“We have discovered that LifeLock has been sponsoring advertisements on most major search engines including (among others) Google, Yahoo, Lycos, MSN, Dogpile, and AOL, that deceptively led consumers to Lifelock.com. Specifically, when you searched ‘Namesafe.com’ in any major search engine, you found an advertisement that said ‘Namesafe.com’ but when you clicked on it, you were not directed to the official site for NAMESAFE (www.namesafe.com), but rather to our competitor, LifeLock.com.”
In an article on Namesafe, Identity Theft Labs, an identity theft protection company pointed out that it was very common for an identity theft protection company to be bidding on the trademarked keywords of competitors until recently when LifeLock requested that competitors refrain from bidding on their trademarked name.
In a article by CNET writer Stephen Shankland LifeLock denied NameSafe’s allegations.
“We have contacted our reseller network to remind them of the importance of compliance with LifeLock’s requirements. We have been informed that a non-compliant reseller purchased the term ‘NameSafe.’ The reseller has subsequently been terminated. LifeLock will not tolerate violations of our compliance guidelines from any independent reseller.”
Are competitors allowed to bid on your trademarked names. This is the real issue from a legal point of view and one that is still not clear.
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Tags: google
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