Google is changing its UK AdWords trademark policy

Thanks to PPC Blog now we know about the important change that Google is rolling out for its UK AdWords trademark policy. According to the current UK trademark policy, an AdWords advertiser cannot bid on trademarked keyword since every trademark term is automatically disabled by the system. This means that, for instance, Pepsi cannot bid on the word “Coca Cola” for promoting its Google ad texts.

In the future, things are going to be different. As in the US, UK advertisers will be allowed to bid on trademark terms, provided that they will not be authorized to use those keywords inside their AdWords text ads. This is a major change for the Google AdWords policy, maybe a signal of the will to extend the US trademark policy all over the whole geographical AdWords network.

Many advertisers will be delighted by Google’s decision, while others won’t. Actually this policy adjustment will underline an old issue about trademark policy; Is it fair that someone could use my brand to promote his? It seems that for Google it is, at least in the US and the UK.

Without a doubt the new trademark policy will increase the online advertising competition, offering everyone to bid on proprietary terms; meaning that not only Coca Cola will be allowed to use the keyword “coca cola”. On the other hand, is it really fair that an advertiser could capitalize on someone’s elses efforts, name, reputation, even taking the risk to tarnish the trademarked brand?

This issue it is not about the mere advertising market, but it is getting into legal and ethical topics; this means that an advertiser like 77 will be in charge of promoting its clients to their best, while at the same time, preserving client’s brand from being misused.

This entry was posted on Friday, April 4th, 2008 at 3:29 pm and is filed under Search Engine Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.