Can you bid on your competitors name? Habush and Rottier v. Cannon & Dunphy

Let me start by saying this is not new news. Companies have been bidding using Google Adwords on competitors names and keywords for years now. My favorite is still when the Pontiac G6 first came out someone in marketing thought it would be hip 3 years ago to say don’t go to www.”pontiac G6″.com but say “Google G6″ well someone smarter in Mazda’s marketing decided to big on that term essentially flipping their TV ads to their competitors.

But my question to you is do you have a problem if McDonalds says it has more beef than Burger King or when Verizon says it has more coverage than AT&T, woops bad example thats a lawsuit too.

I would suggest to you thats all Cannon & Dunphy was doing. Would you like to hire X? Consider hiring Y? This is the competitive nature of our world. This is in fact Cannon’s argument. Habush is trying something slightly different than the usual complaint citing privacy grounds instead of trademark infringement.

I will leave the legal analysis to the attorneys in our office. What I will remind people is that sometimes you need to go online to protect your brand and defend your position. Keep in mind Google policy specifically allows the use of Adwords of trademarked terms to show competitive information as long as it’s not deceptive. Read the fill google adwords trademark policies here.