Protect your trademarks: online poachers can undermine your business

• Google and Overture allow advertisers to purchase company and product names and federally registered marks as keywords in pay-per-click campaigns.
• This allows companies to poach potential customers from their competition by having their ads appear whenever a consumer searches for a competitor by name.
• The practice also saves competitors money because a competitor's name can be less expensive and better targeted than campaigns that use general terms.
• For example, I recently priced the cost of "Home Insurance" as a keyword at $9.85 per click.
• In 2004, Geico auto insurance challenged Google and Overture for the practice with mixed results.
• When the case against Google was heard, district court judge Leonie Brinkema in Alexandria, Va., granted Google's motion to dismiss the complaint, saying there wasn't enough evidence of trademark infringement by ads triggered by keywords where the ads do not contain the Geico mark.
• Marjory Stewart, a Milwaukee-based intellectual property and business law attorney, said the Geico/Google case is one that will involve deft discernment of trademark law.
• The district court held that where competitors' ads come up on the Google results page as a result of such keyword links, and these result pages do display the Geico trademarks in a manner which is likely to cause confusion, that it can constitute trademark infringement on the part of the advertiser.
• Businesses need to be wary of using a competitor's name to promote their own business and aware of how competitors may be infringing on their brands and trademarks.
• One of the most important reasons to register your marks is to ensure that you're the definitive owner and to deter others who may consider adopting them for their own uses.