Google in Court over Trademark Infrigement

The row over trademark infringement and Pay Per Click(PPC) continues as LVMH, the company behind the Luis Vuitton brand of hand bags and luggage, have taken Google to court in a row over trademark usage.

LVMH have accused Google of selling keyword terms such as “vuitton” to PPC campaign managers for rival brands and firms selling counterfeit copies of Luis Vuitton designs. LVMH argue that when users Google the brand name, they will now be directed to competitors or counterfeiters.

Originally disputed in a lower French court, which ruled against Google, the case has since been escalated to the European Court of Justice (EJC) in Luxembourg following an appeal.

LVMH have been actively defending their trademarks online or late, having sued eBay to the tune of 40million euros last June. The French court ruled that eBay had not done enough to stop the sale of counterfeit handbags, perfumes and luggage under LVMH brand names such as Luis Vuitton, Givenchy and Christian Dior.

The case, which is unlikely to be resolved for months, follows the recent case lodged by world-wide florists Interflora against Marks and Spencerover M&S bidding on the Interflora brand name as part of their PPC campaign for their own florist services.

The outcomes of both of these cases could set a precedent for online marketing, which has for years considered targeting rival brand names as accepted practice for PPC and Search Engine Optimisation campaigns.

Interflora sue M&S – What does this mean for PPC in the UK?

News surfaced recently that international florists Interflora are to sue supermarket and fashion retail chain Mark’s & Spencer for buying the Interflora brand name as a keyword for a Pay Per Click campaign for their own florist services.

Interflora are accusing M&S of bidding on both the term “Interflora” and a number of miss-spellings of the brand name, including “Inter-flora” and  ”Intaflora” as part of their online marketing campaign in an attempt to “steal” customers from the Detroit based florists. The company claim it is an infringement upon the Interflora trade mark.

A spokesperson for Marks and Spencer stated “We are extremely surprised Interflora has taken this course of action. This is industry-wide practice and is not unlawful.”

The case could set a precident on the practice of bidding on competitors brand names for PPC marketing with only two other related cases having passed through UK courts.

In 2008 the High Court dismissed a keyword advertising case against Yahoo! by ruling that Yahoo! did not infringe upon a businessmans trade mark by displaying advertisments for supermarket Sainsbury’s and others when users searched for his trade mark as a search term. While Victor Wilson argued that his mark “Mr Spicy” was being infringed upon, the court ruled that only the English word “spicy” was being sponsored and therefore, not Wilson’s trade mark.

Prior to this, the only other recorded case on this subject was between recruitment agency Reed Executives and publishers Reed Business Information over a dispute over the display of banner ad for totaljobs.com operated by Reed Business Information, on the Yahoo! search results page for the term “Reed”. Reed Executives sued the publishers aleging trade mark infringement.

The case, brought forward under section 10(2) of the Trade Marks Act 1994, which requires evidence of “a likelihood of confusion on the part of the public”, was ruled against by Lord Justice Jacobs who cited that the average customer would not be confused into thinking the banner ad carrying the brand totaljobs.com, with no reference to Reed, could be confused for Reed Executives.

The sections of the Trade Marks Act that Interflora are relying upon (sections 10(1) and 10(3)) do not require evidence of confusion, effectively giving Interflora a good case.

The outcome of the decision could have serious implications for a number of PPC marketers who develop strategies specifically designed to compete with brands over their own names and trade marks.

No Love For Valentines SEO?

No love for SEO this "valentines day"

Officially recognised holiday’s and days of celebration, as we all know, are a major event for commercial marketers aiming to position their product/service/experience as THE ideal gift for the given holiday. However, as I noted in December, the big (largely currently struggling for enough sales) retail companies seem to shun undertaking any targeted online search promotion for these events. And at this time of year, it’s Valentine’s Day’s turn to be snubbed.

Keyword search results on Google for Valentines Day related terms

A quick look at Google’s AdWords keyword tool (keeping it Google since it’s the SE I’m looking at), suggests there were 40,500 searches in the UK for the term “valentines day” alone and that AdWords competition for the term is “full green bar”, so somewhat competitive then! However, a look at the top 10 results for “valentines day” in Google brings up a set of organic search results notably devoid of any major retailers.

With online sales having increased dramatically (in the UK) in the last 2 months, and online advertising spend now over £2billion (only 2-3% behind television and print advertising spend and growing), it is somewhat surprising that the big retailers would neglect to target holiday terms such as this in order to cash in on this growth.

As with my last post about “christmas presents”, it was clear that, while organic search was neglected, PPC for these terms was being conducted by a few of the big retailers (M&S, Apple, Earnest Jones),  and again, a few are in on it with “valentines day”. M&S (Mark’s and Spencer’s) have once again opted for PPC along with interflora, Aldi (supermarket) and easyjet. While some people mentioned in the comments for my last post that these retailers probably opted for PPC due to the fact that in order to achieve high rankings for a seasonal term such as “valentines day” or “christmas presents”, you would have to maintain a page on your site for these offerings, even outwith the seasonal timeframe.

This is a valid point, however, given the cost per click for these terms (highly competitive remember), Rand’s own analysis of the success of PPC vs SEO, and the relative frequency of “Special Offers” pages, wouldn’t it be more beneficial to simply maintain seasonal holiday pages under this main heading and reap the search rewards?

There are a number of companies in particular that would probably significantly benefit from this approach, in particular, businesses involved in the typical gift sectors such as flowers (interflora, flowers direct), chocolates (Thorntons, Green & Blacks), lingerie (Agent Provocature, Ann Summers), jewellery (Earnest Jones, H.S. Samuel) etc.

A number of these sites already have Valentines Day specific pages on them, yet none rank in the top 20 for the highly searched term “valentines day”, despite the fact that this is probably one of the biggest “celebration days” for these businesses in terms of sales.

Even with the average valentines day gift spend predicted to decline due to the current economic climate (reports I have seen suggest an average spend of £72, down from £92), there is still likely to be a large amount of money being left on the online table.

So is this a missed opportunity for retailers, particularly during difficult times?

Google gives candy for Christmas – A missed SEO opportunity

A quick search for “christmas” in Google brings up something a little different from the big G. It seems that a special addition of candy canes is what the search engine are providing this year. I’d have preferred some extra boosted rankings for our search engine optimisation customers but what can you do!

Google's festive spirit

Interestingly, the term “christmas”, according to Google Adwords keyword tool, generated 13.6 million searches in November alone. Yet, a look at the top ranking results for the term shows a total lack of optimisation effort on the part of businesses, particularly those whose biggest trade period is the run up to christmas. Even the term “christmas present”, which generated 60,500 searches for the singular and 165,000 searches for the plural, “christmas presents” in November is poorly optimised for with the top ranking site only registering 33 google indexed backlinks and a pagerank of 3.

Christmas search statistics

Interestingly, both Ernest Jones – the jewellers, and Apple.com have PPC adverts for the term “christmas present”. Yet wouldn’t it have been just as easy for these two, pretty large companies I’m sure you’ll agree, to have SEO’d their websites? Afterall, statistics and tracking both show that organic search results generate more clicks than PPC.

Perhaps something for the retail industry to consider this credit crunching Christmas.

Have a good one!

Keyword Questions Tool or What language do Scotland people speak…

I recently came across this neat little keyword tool from the people behind Wordtracker. The tool allows you to view results for questions people have entered as queries in search engines relating to a given keyword.

Some interesting results are produced for the keyword “Scotland”…

What language do Scotland people speak...

Obviously the tool has practical applications for SEO purposes, notably in determining phrases to target where your business/organisation might provide a suitable answer.

The tool also has practical uses in determining negative keywords when managing a Pay Per Click campaign, effectively allowing you to identify terms which might drive non-targeted traffic through your advertisements, leading to wasted clicks from visitors with no interest in your offering.

It also provides some laughs as you gaze with mocking contempt at the searches of the linguistically and geographically challenged!