Google wins seo handbag war
Posted by Patrick Murphy on Thu, Apr 15, 2010
Today Google won a giant legal case against fashion house Louise Vuitton over the misuse of Louis Vuitton's trademarks for SEO (search engine optimization) purposes. Louis Vuitton, which is part of the LVMH group of brands including Moet & Chandon and Dior, had argued that Google was acting illegally by allowing other companies to bid for and use its brand names as keywords to trigger ads on its website.
In court the judge did state that Google is not liable for when people or their users use trademarked keywords to promote or sell counterfeit goods. The European Court of Justice ruled in favour of Google as the company played a neutral role in the business-to-business marketing campaigns in question. Previously Google used to block advertisers from buying others' brand names as keywords but changed its policy in North America in 2004 and four years later extended that to Europe.
The judge did go on to say firms who used trademarked
material to deceive consumers were at risk of being sued. This does highlight the risk and the legal implications that SEO (search engine optimization) campaigns can have. Seems like a good time to invest in Social Media and Inbound Marketing. While Google may have won this case it is a note to other people that are using brand names as part of their search engine strategy.
The knock on of this is that it is now easier for
advertisers and competition to secure an advantage by piggy backing on the reputation of the trademark. Does this show the need for companies to move away from PPC to inbound marketing?
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