Adwords Trademark Policy update in Ireland & UK

2008 April 4
by Barry

Photo by Adriaan Bloem

From Google Support

Google has made a policy revision that applies to complaints we receive regarding trademarks in the UK and Ireland. For complaints received on or after Friday, April 4, 2008, we will no longer review a term corresponding to the trademarked term as a keyword trigger. However, we will continue to perform a limited courtesy investigation of complaints regarding ad text purported to be in violation of a trademark.

Beginning May 5, 2008, keywords that were disabled as a result of a trademark investigation will no longer be restricted in the UK and Ireland.

This bring the procedure in line with that of the USA/Canada.

What this allows you to do, is to bid on trademarked terms. although you obviously can’t impersonate or pretend to be the owner of that trademark – the recent update to the Display URL Policy.

Interesting times ahead, any complaints I’ve raised with Google, have all been handled quite smoothly, but Irish companies tend to send threatening letters first, before checking what the correct policy is, and in some cases they don’t have the actual phrase or term correctly protected.

from → Google Adwords

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  • http://www.mneylon.com/blog/ Michele

    The new Google policy is a copout.
    The only reason they’re doing it is because they haven’t been challenged enough in Irish and UK courts. I can’t see them trying to pull the same trick in other EU countries since they’ve already seen how well that would be received.

  • http://www.mneylon.com/blog/ Michele

    The new Google policy is a copout.
    The only reason they’re doing it is because they haven’t been challenged enough in Irish and UK courts. I can’t see them trying to pull the same trick in other EU countries since they’ve already seen how well that would be received.

  • http://www.barryhand.ie/ Barry

    From a marketers point of view, it’s great. It now allows me to target searchers when they are that ‘Buy’ stage (albeit for a competitor)

  • http://www.barryhand.ie Barry

    From a marketers point of view, it’s great. It now allows me to target searchers when they are that ‘Buy’ stage (albeit for a competitor)

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