Late Thursday, Google announced the largest changes to their US AdWords policy in some time. Previously, trademark owners could prevent anyone from using their trademarks in their ad copy. Now, resellers and information sites may utilize the trademarked terms in their ad copy.
Google announced a change yesterday to its AdWords trademark policy in 190 countries, bringing that policy in line with its policies for the US, CA, UK & IE.
Amazon sent an email to all its affiliates this morning announcing a change in its paid search policy for affiliates - Affiliates will no longer be allowed to direct link to Amazon.
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.
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:
