But isn't the purpose of a Trademark to keep someone from stealing a source identifier? Finding a competitors advertisement in a search for a trademarked company does not confuse who the source of the trademark is.

Shannon wrote:
But isn't the purpose of a Trademark to keep someone from stealing a source identifier? Finding a competitors advertisement in a search for a trademarked company does not confuse who the source of the trademark is.

The reason that you want to keep someone from stealing a source identifier is so that person cannot fraudulently profit from the name recognition, branding, and advertising done by the real source. For example, you've heard of the "yellow pages" and you go looking for the "yellow pages" and you pick up the "yell-o pages" instead. The proprieter of the "yell-o pages" is profiting from the advertising that the "yellow pages" is doing. Purchasing advertisements on someone else's name does precisely the same thing. The first person spends money building their brand, and you get to reap some of the benefit from piggybacking on their name recognition.

Yell-o-pages might confuse some people to thinking that they are the real thing, and not some generic knock off. People may associate Yell-o-Pages with the real Yellow Pages. If I went into a store and asked for "coke" and they only had pepsi in house and told me this in response to my question, this is not pepsi using coke symbols to pretend to be the authentic supplier of "coke." I think a google search ads is similar to putting your brand on the same shelf as competitor brands, but because the source is not confused, its not infringement. If the sign on an aisle read "transformers" and there were go-bots on the shelf next to the real transformers, go-bots do not need to be removed from the aisle. The go-bots are using the recognized name of transformers for better product placement, but they are not saying "we are transformers" which may be the integral difference.

Decius wrote:

Shannon wrote:
But isn't the purpose of a Trademark to keep someone from stealing a source identifier? Finding a competitors advertisement in a search for a trademarked company does not confuse who the source of the trademark is.

The reason that you want to keep someone from stealing a source identifier is so that person cannot fraudulently profit from the name recognition, branding, and advertising done by the real source. For example, you've heard of the "yellow pages" and you go looking for the "yellow pages" and you pick up the "yell-o pages" instead. The proprieter of the "yell-o pages" is profiting from the advertising that the "yellow pages" is doing. Purchasing advertisements on someone else's name does precisely the same thing. The first person spends money building their brand, and you get to reap some of the benefit from piggybacking on their name recognition.

I don't think there is a "physical world" analogy that perfectly captures the situation where one company purchases advertising under the name of another company.

There are two problems with your coke and transformers analogies. The first is that you are using those words in a context where the trademark has nearly become synonimous with a category of things. People, particularly in the south, think of pepsi as being "a kind of coke" instead of a kind of cola or pop. The situation I'm referring to does not have that aspect.

The second problem is that in neither scenario does the competitor (pepsi or gobots) pay money specifically to have their product categorized under their competitor's trademark, and I think that is a significant difference. Pepsi cannot print "a kind of coke" on their labels, and they cannot print up signs that say "coke" and ask their retaillers to put those signs next to the pepsi display in their stores. This is dillution at best and it is illegal.

Actually, companies pay a lot of money for shelf space. Most of the generics want to be right next to what they are knocking off. Even some retail supermarkets and such will purposely put their generic brand right next to a trademarked brand. I think as a real world analogy goes, its closer than the alternative. The shelf analogy is better because neither the google searches or the shelves actually hijack the "recognition" of the brand, however money is spent based on trademarked brand names to capitalize on the popularity of that specific brand. They can't say, "we're really transformers" and neither way does really, so thats probably the biggest qualifier.

It doesnt need to be just coke or transformers. "Spam," "Treet," and "Potted Meat Food Product" are all the same bizarre sort of thing for instance. Someone can go to a random restaurant and ask for a "blooming onion" and get a custom generic made. Some people may walk into a store and perform nearly an identical search that you can make with google. Walk up to smocked person (or gooogle bot) and ask for "Spam", they reply "Aisle 5" and you will see Treet on the shelf there as well as the real brand. If they even carry the real thing.

Decius wrote:
I don't think there is a "physical world" analogy that perfectly captures the situation where one company purchases advertising under the name of another company.

There are two problems with your coke and transformers analogies. The first is that you are using those words in a context where the trademark has nearly become synonimous with a category of things. People, particularly in the south, think of pepsi as being "a kind of coke" instead of a kind of cola or pop. The situation I'm referring to does not have that aspect.

The second problem is that in neither scenario does the competitor (pepsi or gobots) pay money specifically to have their product categorized under their competitor's trademark, and I think that is a significant difference. Pepsi cannot print "a kind of coke" on their labels, and they cannot print up signs that say "coke" and ask their retaillers to put those signs next to the pepsi display in their stores. This is dillution at best and it is illegal.

Shannon wrote:
Actually, companies pay a lot of money for shelf space. Most of the generics want to be right next to what they are knocking off. Even some retail supermarkets and such will purposely put their generic brand right next to a trademarked brand. I think as a real world analogy goes, its closer than the alternative. /blockquote>
Yes, people pay for shelf space. It is not directed toward "I want to be next to the coke" so much as it is "I want to be in the soda section at eye level." However, even if it were "I want to be next to the coke" this is not precisely the same thing as "I want to be listed under the word "coke" in your bibliography." Most supermarkets do not have a sign that says "coke" and most toy stores do not have a sign that says "transformers" even in the south where people have a habit for substituting trademarks for general catagories of products.

The shelf analogy is better because neither the google searches or the shelves actually hijack the "recognition" of the brand, however money is spent based on trademarked brand names to capitalize on the popularity of that specific brand.
Huh? If you saw an advertisement for Kleenex and its the only facial tissue you've ever heard of and then you type it into google because you don't quite remember the URL and you get an advertisement for Reliable instead (I'm in Germany so thats what showed up in my search), CLEARLY Reliable has benefited from the name recognition that Kleenex has built. I would never have known about Reliable had I never heard of Keelex, as I would never have typed Kleenex into Google and so I would never had seen that ad.

The bottom line is that when people see ads they like they type things into Google. If they see an ad for X product, they type X product's name into Google, and in return they get a bunch of competitor's products, its likely they'll buy the competitor's product instead. When this is happenstance, its life. When those competitors have purposfully purchased those ads in order to benefit from the advertising expenditures incured by X product, its theft. I don't see whats so hard to understand about this.