Pay Per Click Advertising Sets Off Trademark Lawsuit
Jul 3rd, 2008 by Traffic
A lawsuit filed by NameSafe against LifeLock raised a fascinating issue yesterday. Are trademarked names protected when it comes to pay per click advertising.
The suitwas launched in the Middle District of Tennessee, where NameSafe is headquartered, and alleges that Lifelock attempted to steal the trademark and diverted traffic from NAMESAFE.com A NameSafe press release in which founder and CEO David Ridings said
“We have discovered that LifeLock has been sponsoring advertisements on most major search engines including (among others) Google, Yahoo, Lycos, MSN, Dogpile, and AOL, that deceptively led consumers to Lifelock.com. Specifically, when you searched ‘Namesafe.com’ in any major search engine, you found an advertisement that said ‘Namesafe.com’ but when you clicked on it, you were not directed to the official site for NAMESAFE (www.namesafe.com), but rather to our competitor, LifeLock.com.”
In an article on Namesafe, Identity Theft Labs, an identity protection company pointed out that it was ordinary for an identity theft protection company to be bidding on the trademarked name of competitors until recently when LifeLock requested that competitors refrain from bidding on their trademarked names.
According to Stephen Shankland from CNET LifeLock denied using trademarked names.
“We have contacted our reseller network to remind them of the importance of compliance with LifeLock’s requirements. We have been informed that a non-compliant reseller purchased the term ‘NameSafe.’ The reseller has subsequently been terminated. LifeLock will not tolerate violations of our compliance guidelines from any independent reseller.”
Are competitors allowed to bid on your trademarked names. This is the real concern from a legal standpoint and one the courts have been inconsistent in ruling upon.
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