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Keyword Ad Initiates Lawsuit By Namesafe
Posted in Pay Per Click
A recent lawsuit raised some issues regarding the legal issues of pay per click advertising and trademark names. NameSafe, an identity theft protection provider, sued LifeLock for using their trademarked name in search engine advertising.
The Federal suitwas filed in the Middle District of Tennessee and alleges violations of trademark laws and the Tennessee Consumer Protection Act In a press release by the company CEO David Ridings stated
“We have discovered that LifeLock has been sponsoring advertisements on most major search engines including (among others) Google, Yahoo, Lycos, MSN, Dogpile, and AOL, that deceptively led consumers to Lifelock.com. Specifically, when you searched ‘Namesafe.com’ in any major search engine, you found an advertisement that said ‘Namesafe.com’ but when you clicked on it, you were not directed to the official site for NAMESAFE (www.namesafe.com), but rather to our competitor, LifeLock.com. It is one of the most bizarre attempts to steal a company brand and its costumers that I have personally seen. Ironically enough, we consider it a form of ‘corporate identity theft’ from a company that is in the business of protecting identities, and we really could not tolerate it. Having said that, we expect it will stop today.”
In a statement to Stephen Shankland of CNET LifeLock denied the allegations.
“Following notice of a pending lawsuit from WSMV in Nashville, TN on Thursday, we immediately began an investigation and determined that LifeLock Corporation has never purchased any competitive branded search terms. To be clear, LifeLock Corporation has never used the ‘NameSafe’ name in LifeLock ad copy.”
IdentityTheftLabs.com indicated in an article on Name Safe that until recently bidding on competitor trademark names was common in the industry.
Should an identity theft protection company be allowed to bid on their competitors keyword name? That is a question that will hopefully be answered in the near future.