Coke and Pepsi
Wouldn't this imply that companies like Coke and Pepsi should not be able to use their competitors products in their commercials?
Owners of trade marks with a reputation could stop other companies using their brands as triggers for Google adverts if the use is an attempt to benefit from the reputation of that brand, an advisor to the European Court of Justice (ECJ) has said. ECJ Advocate General Niilo Jääskinen has published an opinion on a High Court …
....but if I search for "Interflora" and get an "M&S" page instead then the M&S page would get the royal sod off. If I search for a specific brand then I'm obviously looking for that particular product, not some hokey M&S knock-off. I don't see why other companies should be able to cash in on regularly search brand names to punt their own similar product.
Recently, I've been surprised by how often a search for "postgres", say, will take me to an Oracle (Oracle/MySQL) page. This is clearly intentional on the part of the page publishers and an inconvenience to punters who simply want to download the latest build, e.g.
OTOH, I have often done queries like "MySQL vs. Postgres", fully expecting to get a comparison from both software publishers as well as (hopefully) financially less interested third parties. And shouldn't vendors be allowed to compare themselves to their competition?
I often want to search for alternatives to a named product. For example, I might even type "cheaper than Humax" or "anything but Sony" into Google I have no problem with other companies advertising their alternative products to me in response to my search enquiry.
It's funny how these reports never seem to consider what's good for the consumer, the economy, or for society in general. They seem to think that the sole purpose of trademark law is to benefit trademark owners. That's circular, if anything is.
So, just click the advert, M&S pay Google a penny and then head on over to interflora anyway.
Google gets slightly richer, you get to vent your spleen by making M&S spend a penny (so to speak) and everyone is happy!
I often click the advertising links of companies who I don't like just to cost them a penny, you should try it, it's fun.