Those that have been following the various legal wranglings over search ads and trademarks recognize that a key issue is whether search ads classify as a 'use in commerce'. This distinction is important for trademark holders - very few trademark protections apply unless the trademark is 'used in commerce'. I'm surprised that there has ever been any doubt about this issue, but it hasn't necessarily been clear in the past.
Recent Posts
I spoke on a great panel on brand and reputation management. The bulk of the content was focused on personal reputation management, however it was very high quality.
SearchEngineLand wrote on a recent ruling by a French court that fined Google 350,000 Euros for allowing companies to bid on the trademarks of two companies.
The Wall Street Journal has an interesting article on the very recent rise in online fraud. It certainly suggests that fraud rises in the downturn.
We were honored to be nominated for the Semmy Award for best PPC post of 2008 for our post on Search Engine PPC Trademark policies.
PPCHero has a great post that discusses why trademarked terms are allowed in display URLs:
I'll be out at Affiliate Summit Sun-Tues. If you are interested in meeting up, send me a note (http://www.brandverity.com/contact/) or twitter @brandverity
Verizon issued a press release today that announced a record $33.5M cybersquatting judgment against OnlineNIC. There were 663 domains in question and the judge chose to award $50K per domain, presumably under the guidelines of the Anti-Cybersquatting Protection Act (ACPA), which allow a penalty of between $1K and $100K per domain. Very little is known about the actual case, and nearly all of the blog posts and press coverage simply restate the press release.
ICANN had been planning on a radical transformation of the gTLD system in May 2009 that would result in a tremendous expansion of available gTLDs (current examples of gTLDs include .biz, .mobi, .com, .org). The proposal would basically allow anyone with $185K to buy a new gTLD (although technically those are application fees).
