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Trademarks As Search-Engine Keywords: Who, What, When, David Franklyn, David A. Hyman
Trademarks As Search-Engine Keywords: Who, What, When, David Franklyn, David A. Hyman
Publications
Most Internet searches result in unpaid (organic or algorithmic) results, and paid ads. The specific ads that are displayed are dictated by the user's search terms ("keywords"). In 2004, Google began offering trademarks for use as keywords on an unrestricted basis, followed in due course by other search engines. Once that happened, any entity (including sellers of competing products) could have their ads appear in response to a search for the trademarked product. Trademark owners responded by filing more than 100 lawsuits in the United States and Europe, making the dispute the hottest controversy in the history of trademark law. …
Trademarks As Search Engine Keywords: Much Ado About Something?, David Franklyn, David A. Hyman
Trademarks As Search Engine Keywords: Much Ado About Something?, David Franklyn, David A. Hyman
Publications
We report on the results of a two-part study, including three online consumer surveys and a coding study of the results when 2500 trademarks were run through three search engines. Consumer goals and expectations turn out to be quite heterogeneous: a majority of consumers use brand names to search primarily for the branded goods, but most consumers are open to purchasing competing products. We find little evidence of traditional actionable consumer confusion regarding the source of goods, but only a small minority of consumers correctly and consistently distinguished paid ads from unpaid search results, or noticed the labels that search …