Free for a Fee

“Competitive keyword advertising” occurs when a company buys the trademarks of its competition as keywords for search engine marketing. In the 2000s, it was one of the most interesting and hotly-contested issues of Internet Law as trademark owners filed many lawsuits and sought legislative protection. In the last few years, however, the issue has mostly fizzled out. A major 2011 ruling in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals cleaned up many of the legal doctrines that trademark owners were relying upon, and the Tenth Circuit extended that approach in 2013 in a devastating trademark owner loss. Since the 2011 ruling, I am not aware of any trademark owner winning a competitive keyword advertising case in court, even in cases with plaintiff-favorable facts.

As the competitive keyword advertising legal battles wind down in other industries, the fight is still raging in the legal profession. That’s not particularly surprising. Bar associations have fought against lawyer advertising for decades, and lawyers–as late technological adopters–often fight battles over the last generation’s technology.

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The content in this post was found at http://blog.ericgoldman.org/archives/2015/05/can-lawyers-buy-keyword-ads-on-each-others-names-at-google-forbes-cross-post.htm and was not authored by the moderators of freeforafee.com. Clicking the title link will take you to the source of the post.