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Look forward to more articles from you and to find out what the other people in the law perfession think of this.

In my opinion as long as the adwords advertisers link clearly says, sponsored links this should be fine. According to me competitors should be allowed to bid for trademark keywords, but should not allow those keywords to be placed in their ads.

Example if someone is searching for "Honda Cars", there is nothing wrong in allowing ford to bid for those keywords as long as their ad says, "Ford Cars". If they place an add saying, "Better than Honda Cars" then it is not right.

If the verdict goes against google, then soon someone will file a lawsuit for organic result as well. 

when people search for a company name, they only want content from that company, not paid content from competitors or any other organization that might be targeting that keyword (like non-profits, critics, or news agencies).

I don't think you can say to Google (or any search provider) that all roads must lead to the trademark holder. For example if I want to search for "apple ipod" because I want to shop for iPod accessories, I'm expecting that when I type "apple ipod" and hit enter I'm going to get tons of hits on any page that has those two words. It's unreasonable to expect Google to restrict the search to ONLY pages that have those words in them that are owned by the trademark holders of the word iPod. If that was the case Google would be useless for almost any search of any kind.

I'm not sure if fair use of the trademark terms would apply here. I can't see that I would have to obtain permission to use the word iPod if I were to write a blog about something and use the term iPod, like a review or how-to article. Of even if I want to ask customers, "looking for an iPod? Try our new Acme Portable Digital Media Player Model #1 instead!"

Rescuecomm can reasonably expect that Google would return Rescuecomm's website as the first result (even if they didn't pay extra for special placement or not), but they can't expect Google to block all other referances to their company or any trademarked terms.

You have to accept that in the marketplace (of the present, past, and future) that other people will use your trademark names to sell their stuff. It's just part of the way the world works. Anything that stops that from happening restricts our freedom.

For the last four month my ads were doing good for small money about 10USD/day but starting from last month I get no click at all for my small website because google ask me to pay 4-8 US Doller for one Click  to compete for my keyword .this is unfair from google.

What if Google disabled ALL links regarding Rescuecomm so that EVEN THEIR WEBSITE did not appear.  I wonder if they would feel "left out" of the WWW.  You can't have it all in this new world of global communications.  Either you get YOUR exposure and deal with the competition on the same level, or you step off from the world stage and go-it the pre-tech way.

What Rescuecomm and other companies want is not in the interests of protecting their trademark, but in eliminating Google's ability and right to inform consumers of other options and opinions.

There is a plethora of issues here but I will try to address this one primary statement and two issues that arise from it.

first to say that "Google" has a right to inform as would any human being is not true since unlike any ole Joe  Schmo, Google has a worldwide voice that is at this point easily large enough to move economies.  Therefore Google has an obligation to preserve the strength of the market thus the economy.  As you say "on the surface this seems obvious that assisting competition (in your opinion) by allowing competitors to advertise on your trademark name will help prices go down.  When you take a closer look however you will find that like my company the company who has been victimized but the leeches will resort to higher ad costs and other security measures in an effort to protect their own name.  This is paramount to forcing you to buy home security because your neighbors keep using your home as their own.  And in the end the market will lose to higher prices.

And as an inventor and business owner I am sick of hearing about all he poor victims who claim rights to do this and that and that they are just trying to make a living (on my efforts company name and goodwill).   Ever notice that these people who change vocations like a chameleon changes colors only gripe about what is preventing them from doing x y or z?  And when they can't do whatever they want then they blame others or the government?

Here is an idea, instead of griping get off your backside and create your own company.  The people whose back you are resting on did.

Google is not unfair it is actually very democratic and if a trademark name is targeted to create traffiic for example apple computer for people selling apple computer complementary products then it provides new possibilities in related subcategories. Google is not going to place your website next to apple in the natural search as the patents are very clear that this kind of duplication would be eliminated. Selecting Keywords and writing ads and website pages that reflect that keyword density is a job that requires human capital. We spent over 5 months of work just to get indexed for our main set of keywords that just describes the cloest match of what our product does. When we first began experimenting with keywords it was a pay per click Yahoo experiment that led to many misconceptions about how search engines actually function. Through trial and error we managed to survive and learn the new job skills required to get indexed in the main keywords and generated sales which we believe we earned in a democratic fair and impartial way. Google analytics do not reward people for keywords in the adwords campaigns that are not relevant to the page and prodct descriptions on the website. You can try to experiment with that as we did we tried a campaign with 2000 keywords which lasted about 8 hours before the price per word went up to $5 per word over the $0.10 we paid for each of them. So clearly you would end up paying alot of money to buy the word apple in an adwords campaign if you were not an apple dealer for instance. 

If we look at this case law and we have a judge tht decides a matter then some jealous party the plantiff that sued google appeals the the federal courts this may be one version of democracy but I think it is a bit disruptive. When you are in a fight like that you must reflect on what happened and realize that suing people and having such problems is never good. The jealousy that yahoo had for google was evident with some of the things they said when I had to fight to buy the keywords from them initially at 30 cents a piece. I am not claiming to be a internet webmaster but anyone that wants to figure out how google can work for them does not really get any help from google when they pay for those words. They are taking a chance that they may get less internet traffic than more. The key I think is to focus on the desire to figure out how to do some work on your website and ad campaigns that produces good results. The thret of making it a crime to pay for the word apple computer is what no one needs. These are questions of really what a trademark actually is and when you take a word like water no one can trademark the name water. So why is the word apple any different just because someone is selling computer periperals? There is no real difference and then it becomes a war of words and a drama of the courts. So if we let the judicial review of the lower court be overturned in a case like this what we are saying is that the internet is the tool of some to promote the sale of their goods just not all people. Infringment is when you sold a computer and placed the mark on the good as if you were apple computer selling an apple. Infringment is not intended to mean that if you are selling complementary items or peripherals that apple computer buyers may want to know about you cannot use the word apple in an adword campaign. The internet is really about human thought and when you are buying words or designing a webpage with good google analytics it may not be perfect it may take several months or a year to develope. Advertising helps the website whether it is paid for or free but we live in America and to control human though in such a way to say to every person on the internet that they cannot buy the word apple computer if they are not Steve Jobs or one of his employees is unconstitutional and repressive.

There are politicians like the former Prosecutor Rudolf Guiliani who think that every one that gets on the internet needs an id. What kind of freedom is that? This agenda of knowledege managment is really what this case is all about. The judges at the federal courts can damage all of our freedom to use the net with cases like this. Greed is not good but greed the want to take on Google for money is fueling the repression of the net. Everyone from facebook to yahoo and even microsoft are trying to beat google and get a piece of the pie as it were. The lawyers and the judges involved in this case are part of the real politics. They don't really care about their clients rights but they seek to control the game long term. I mean who is going to make a million dollars with the keyword apple? Why is so important to regulate human thought? It is bad enough that the patents are public and the jusges coulf bother to read them to try to geet some sense of just how fair google is as a search engine there are over 80 of them to digest. Rich with the one thing everyone fears knowledge. Unlike our books stores where you can buy fiction and some magazines.The truth that it they are only punishing themselves by paying for a keyword to begin with when all they had to do was think of google as a library index and write something good that people want to know about.

For a high court in this country to entertain such a case seriously is the marker that we are as with  this conflict in the middle east priviledged to have some  basic freedoms but that it can be taken away.

No-one is complaining about organic free results, the issue here is that people are TRADING on OTHER PEOPLE'S trade MARKS.

It's akin to some little photo developer shop sticking a big KODAK sign over their shop. You 'click' that shop because you were scanning for a photo shop, thought 'kodak' and spotted one. You get closer (enter site) and find it's not really Kodak but hey, it IS a photo store. So you buy, cos you're there.

The store is not claiming to BE Kodak, they just used the word and symbol to get your attention huh?

No, that is dishonest and trading on other people's goodwill and brand recognition, ie the most expensive and valuable asset a company can have.

To say this doesn't matter or comes under free speech is to say brand names and trademarks don't matter in the first place. If you feel that way best of luck over there in Commie-Land but the rest of us are trying to earn an honest living. Triggering adverts based on other people's trademarks is simply dishonest.

B.

Google wants it both ways.  In their search engine they will happily hijack a search and send it to a competitor (for money), yet in AdWords, they refuse to let you bid on say "Holiday Inn", even though you are actually selling Holiday Inn rooms and getting a commission - not sending a Holiday Inn search to Ramada. 

Let me put it in a format that everyone, even lawyers, can understand. 

Purchasing keywords, even competitors trademarked keywords, next to organic search results is no different then sending a sales rep to a physician and paying (or otherwise encouraging) the physician to promote your brand over the competitors.   The better you butter up the physician, the more likely they are to recommend your brand whenever the patient asks about the competiton.

Is it really that hard to understand?

Say a small company works hard and invests in building a great reputation associated with its unique trademark. I'm not talking about a descriptive term like "Wonderful Cars," but a unique trademark like say "CarsaCola." Because of its hard-earned reputation, someone goes searching for CarsaCola, but see ads for products from competitors who didn't have the CarsaCola idea, and didn't make the investment to build the reputation behind the mark that caused people to initiate the search. All competitors need is deep enough pockets to outbid the owner of the CarsaCola mark for ads based on its trademark, and they can butt in on the link that CarsaCola's owner has built between its trademark and its products or services.

Yes, I agree that search engines are very similar to Grocery Stores and this whole thing is ludacris to think Cheerios could sue the grocery store for placing their boxes next to Cornflakes.

But on the other hand, this is a very visual world we're living in and when you go to the grocery store, you can easily tell the difference between a box of Cornflakes and a box of Cheerios.

The problem is that search engines do not give a visual representation of the companies in the results to make it easier to ensure the searcher is getting exactly what they're searching for. And competitors can phrase their titles/keywords/descriptions and even their design in a way that 'fools' the visitor into clicking on them instead.

I'm curious to see how this turns out.

I own a company that I pay to advertise on the internet.   My company name is being placed in a competitor's meta tags (not just like keywords, as we both sell the same product), but MY BUSINESS NAME and MY NAME, as the busines owner.  When someone does a SPECIFIC search on MY business or MY name, this person's site comes up.  They also pay to have one of the higest rankings on Google.   I don't think that these results should be returned by Google!  To place my business name within their meta tags to gain business via MY paid efforts, having their site appear is totally WRONG, especially, without my permission.   I'm not paying for their advertising, nor do they have my permission to use my name or business name to increase their sales, slander my own, provide comparision shopping, or whatever their 'mission'.  I agree that a professionally desiged website should get you to the top of the rankings and it's up to everyone to stay abreast of change.   Yet, embedding competitor's specific business trademarks in meta tags and having these specific results returned that have nothing to do with their business/product, should not be tolerated in any court of law! 

The comments in this strand are a sad endightment of the intelligence and literacy levels of the US people.  You guys are getting dumber and dumber by the year.  Comments include 'congratulations on using a semi-colon' and 'it was great to see someone use the word specious.'  What is wrong with you people?  It really is no wonder those of us in the rest of the world hold you in such contempt.  After all, congratulating someone on their use of a semi-colon is something a fifth grade teacher in other countries would do.  The saddest part of this is that as a people you actually have influence in this world under the 'great' leadership of George W. Bush (lol).  However, when I see comments like those I can see how someone with such a low IQ can become the leader and representative of your country.  Where do you think your country will be in 50 years time?  That is of course if it still exists!  I have tried to keep the terminology in this correspondence as simple as I can so at least 10 to 20 percent of you might understand it.  Now go back to watching re-runs of the Simpsons.  As for the google argument; who really cares?  Look I used a semi-colon; someone congratulate me.  Adwords days are numbered anyway as the rest of the world has learnt to switch off from the noise and refine their search methods anyway.  It is only the US people who are likely to be attracted by the 'flashing lights' in this case if you are still even interested in sponsored links.  After all, the rest of us already now natural rankings are more meaningful anyway.

Steve (someone who is glad not to be a US citizen).

There is a difference between bidding on trademarks as keywords and the use of those words in the ads themselves or meta-tags.

Advertizers are bidding on the terms and words people enter into search engines which to me has freedom of speech connotations and should be freely permitted.

However, I think trademark owners should have the right to prevent the use of those words in ads and meta-tags if the advertizer does not have the right to use them. But, this must surely be down to the owners to pursue. It would be impossible for search engines to impose a blanket ban on all trademarks in  ads and meta-tags, the vast majority of which are probably perfectly legitimate.

If I sell Coke I should be allowed to advertize the fact, and, if I am prepared to pay more than Coca-Cola to get my ads or serps to the top of the listing - well, that is what the SE business is all about; there is nothing unfair about it. I should also be allowed to advertize that fact when people search for Pepsi, Seven Up, Dr. Pepper or any other cola. But, I would not expect to be allowed to advertize for any of those others if I do not sell them.