Fighting The Brand Cannibals:
Protecting Your Trademark from Being Misused on Search Engines

December 01, 2008

Published in the ACC Docket
December 2008

Search engines like Google and Yahoo! have created lucrative programs to sell keywords to companies and individuals who want to advertise their websites on these search engines.  For instance, Google's AdWords program allows advertisers to purchase specific keywords for use as metatags.  When a user searches for those words, links to advertisers' websites appear in the Sponsored Links column of the search results page.  Although many metatags are not visible to online users, they essentially publish the content of websites to search engines.  More recently, Google has also unveiled its AdSense program, which analyzes a website and automatically generates conceptually related advertising.  The related advertising appears in a bubble on the user's screen known as a parked page or advertising page and contains hyperlinks to the advertisers' websites.  Each time a user clicks on one of these hyperlinks, the domain site owner receives a small click-through or pay-per-view fee.

Document: Fighting The Brand Cannibals - PDF