I remember struggling to find rules on Overture, and later Google, about using other companies’ names as part of keyword advertising. I’ve probably blogged about it, too. Well, now it looks like we now have a legal case that has defined the rules clearly. As posted by MarketingVox:
“In her written opinion, issued last week, U.S. District Court Judge Leonie Brinkema sided with Geico, ruling that the use of trademarked terms in the text of Google ads was ‘likely to cause confusion’; but she also ruled that Google can use trademarks as keywords to trigger the appearance of ads.”
The article also quotes someone at Google saying that their ad technology is already set up to block use of trademarks in AdWords ads.