EU Upholds Ruling That Trademarks In Search Ads Do Not Infringe

EU Court Rules on Ad Keywords from the Wall Street Journal reports the the highest court in Europe upheld and confirmed a decision by a previous court that bidding on trademarked keywords in search engines does not infringe on European trademark law. This specific case was between Portakabin, a cabin maker and a competitor, Primakabin. […]

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EU Court Rules on Ad Keywords from the Wall Street Journal reports the the highest court in Europe upheld and confirmed a decision by a previous court that bidding on trademarked keywords in search engines does not infringe on European trademark law.

This specific case was between Portakabin, a cabin maker and a competitor, Primakabin. Primakabin was using Portakabin to bid on ads on Google and other search engines. The court ruled that Primakabin was not in violation of European trademark law for bidding on a trademarked name.

This is similar to the EU ruling on the Luis Vuitton keyword case where Google won in court.


About the author

Barry Schwartz
Staff
Barry Schwartz is a Contributing Editor to Search Engine Land and a member of the programming team for SMX events. He owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on very advanced SEM topics. Barry can be followed on Twitter here.

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