Keyword advertising is an essential source of revenue for search engine companies and apparently, for the advertisers an effective way to reach desired target groups. Keyword advertising services allow advertisers to sponsor particular search terms. Whenever web surfers enter the selected keywords into the search box, they receive a list of results that includes links for the advertiser who bought those terms.
Keyword advertising, particularly use of trademark protected phrases in search en-gine marketing is controversial and has also proven to be a source of legal complica-tions for the search engines as well as the advertisers who have selected protected trademarks and tradenames as their keywords.
Companies are concerned about their brands and insist that keyword advertising vio-lates their trademarks and tradenames. Advertisers and search engines such as Google and Yahoo! owned Overture Services Inc. have faced numerous trademark infringement lawsuits. Complaints have insisted search engines to cease to use and stop selling keyword phrases, which violate trademarks. Currently several lawsuits are pending in Europe and the United States. To our knowledge, the issue has been disputed also in Finland.
The search engines themselves have hands-off approach and they claim that they cannot be held liable for trademark violating keywords. Search engines say that they do not use the contentious search words for advertising and advertisers are solely re-sponsible for the keywords they choose.
Generally, and as also stated in the Finnish Tradenames Act and Finnish Trademarks Act, the registered trademarks and tradenames provide exclusive rights to use the protected symbols and names. Furthermore, the Finnish Unfair Business Practices Act provides that goodwill of another company may not be used and that false or misleading expression concerning the business of another may not used.
Ultimately, it’s likely to come down to a court decision over what’s acceptable.
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