Thursday, April 19
AdWords Trademarks
If you use Google AdWords then you have probably run into this problem. A perceived trademark infringement keeps you from completing your ad. Sometimes you can ask for an exception and sometimes you will still not be able to use a term.
I can understand possibly this situation in some cases in the ad text, but having the word Hot or Home Equity being trademarked terms??? Come on! I ran into both just recently setting up an account. In the home equity situation we were promoting reverse mortgages for a client and so that ad text mentioned use your home equity for cash. No matter what I did, Google would not release those words and so they could not be used in ad text. Here is another situation, a store which stocks and sells Under Armour clothing could not use Under Armour in their ads or any possible misspellings of the words.
So far Google's rule is restrained to the use of keywords in the ad text in the US but in other countries, you can not even have those words considered infringing in your keyword list. But really consider the word hot. How can this be trademarked?
If you've run into something ridiculous in the trademark infringement arena, click comments and let me know, maybe we can all get a chuckle for the day over what Google considers a trademarked term.
I can understand possibly this situation in some cases in the ad text, but having the word Hot or Home Equity being trademarked terms??? Come on! I ran into both just recently setting up an account. In the home equity situation we were promoting reverse mortgages for a client and so that ad text mentioned use your home equity for cash. No matter what I did, Google would not release those words and so they could not be used in ad text. Here is another situation, a store which stocks and sells Under Armour clothing could not use Under Armour in their ads or any possible misspellings of the words.
So far Google's rule is restrained to the use of keywords in the ad text in the US but in other countries, you can not even have those words considered infringing in your keyword list. But really consider the word hot. How can this be trademarked?
If you've run into something ridiculous in the trademark infringement arena, click comments and let me know, maybe we can all get a chuckle for the day over what Google considers a trademarked term.
Labels: Google AdWords
¶ 4/19/2007 07:14:00 AM
