Blocking Adwords Activism Using Trademark Law

from the hardly-what-trademark-is-for dept

Lawsuits involving companies upset at competitors buying Google Adwords based on their names have been covered to death, with a variety of court rulings (some good, some awful) over the years. In part due to all this legal activity, Google has cut back on some of what's allowed -- specifically limiting the use of trademarked names from others within an ad if the trademark holder complains. This likely goes well beyond what the law requires. For example, trademark law has always allowed the use of competitive names for comparison purposes. That is, Pepsi can say: "compare Pepsi to Coca-Cola!" and it's not a violation of Coca-Cola's trademark. But, with Google's policy in place, Pepsi can't use that as an ad if Coca-Cola complains.

Unfortunately, that can make things tricky for activists trying to highlight activities by certain companies. Jim Harper points us to Chris Soghoian's detailed analysis of this situation, where AT&T has been able to block ads from AT&T critics, because they happen to use AT&T's name in their ads. That's pretty clearly an abuse of trademark law, as it was never intended for such things. Of course, Google, as a private company, is free to do whatever it wants, and in this case it's clearly trying to minimize lawsuits -- but it is a bit troubling that the end result of this policy is to allow trademark law to be misused to block activist speech.
Hide this

Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.

Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.

While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.

–The Techdirt Team

Filed Under: activism, ads, trademark
Companies: at&t, google


Reader Comments

Subscribe: RSS

View by: Time | Thread


  1. identicon
    Jesse, 24 Dec 2008 @ 8:24am

    Then do you think that this would have been part of the damage of a yahoo/google deal? You previously said the google/yahoo deal would not have made any harm to the market, but this looks like an example where it might have.

    link to this | view in thread ]

  2. identicon
    nasch, 27 Dec 2008 @ 8:40am

    Re:

    This is happening as it is without the Google/Yahoo deal - how would that have made it worse?

    link to this | view in thread ]

  3. identicon
    ahmed mohammed, 5 Jan 2009 @ 10:58am

    law

    what are using if law

    link to this | view in thread ]


Follow Techdirt
Essential Reading
Techdirt Deals
Report this ad  |  Hide Techdirt ads
Techdirt Insider Discord

The latest chatter on the Techdirt Insider Discord channel...

Loading...
Recent Stories

This site, like most other sites on the web, uses cookies. For more information, see our privacy policy. Got it
Close

Email This

This feature is only available to registered users. Register or sign in to use it.