bags announced,servers,

I respect and agree with your perspective to a degree, but your argument is best served for issues outside of search engine advertising. While a trademark may be a limited monopoly, the use of trademarks in search engine advertising without the consent of the trademark owner is a total sham. The Utah Trademark Protection Act describes the practice as corporate theft, and I admire their integrity. It is only a matter of time before other jurisdictions play catch up.

The concepts here are very basic and simple to understand. Let me use an analogy. There are two types of phonebooks–the Yellow Pages, where results are sorted by generic categories (non-branded), and the White Pages, where results are sorted by brand (trademarks). Can you imagine how confusing and unfair it would be to find advertisements in the White Pages underneath the listing for Dominos Pizza?

Dominos Pizza……………………125 Elm St (212) 345-6789
SEE ALSO >> Pizza Hut…..150 4th Ave (212) 332-4576
SEE ALSO >> Papa John’s…229 Tee St (212) 451-7789

Competitors of Dominos have every right to advertise in the search engines on generic keywords like “Pizza” (think Yellow Pages), but have no business advertising on the Dominos Pizza trademark itself (think White Pages).

Third parties, as well as the search engines, should not be allowed to leverage the extremely costly IP assets of another entity to generate revenue without approval from the trademark holder. Period.

Finally, let me address your statement: “Apparently you don’t care and reflectively assume that all uses of words, slogans, and designs used to sell some good or service are no longer available to anyone else to sell either those same goods or services or unrelated goods or services.”

Let me address this for two types of advertisers.

1. Retailers/vendors/independent reps advertising on a trademark because they sell new or used versions of the trademarked product. There are many examples of brands that prefer to allow advertising on their trademarks to move product. But in my opinion, it is ultimately the trademark owner who gets to make that decision for two reasons: A) To protect the integrity of their brand, and B) To protect customers who are vulnerable to inferior quality (refurbished, reconditioned) or counterfeited product.

Let’s say a retailer sells accessories for the iPhone. Again, I believe it is up to the trademark holder to allow (endorse) the retailer to advertise on the iPhone trademark. More than anything this measure protects the consumer.

2. Direct competitors. This is where the French courts got it right. They held that Google infringed on Louis Vuitton’s trademark rights by selling search-related keyword advertising to competitors of the fashion company. It’s just common sense. In order to cultivate and maintain a capitalistic environment there has to be rules to protect the players.

A trademark is a limited monopoly right. From the gitgo, therefore, right-thinking people take pause to consider whether that monopoly helps or harms competition. Apparently you don’t care and reflectively assume that all uses of words, slogans, and designs used to sell some good or service are no longer available to anyone else to sell either those same goods or services or unrelated goods or services. Absent proof of marketplace confusion, however, there is no legitimate basis to enjoin that other’s use. I suggest that you need reconsider who the more honest capitalist is in this debate.

Thanks for jumping in the fray. Your statement that the Yahoo ads do not violate Best Buy’s trademark is incorrect and shortsighted. If you would have read the entire post you would have gained some education–a federal district court in the Geico v. Google trademark infringement case ruled that the use of a trademark in the heading or text of a search engine advertisement, triggered for the search of said trademark, is likely to cause confusion and thus violates the Lanham Act.

Trademark dilution is also a part of the code and clearly the Best Buy trademark is recklessly diluted by the third parties advertising for this trademark.

It is just a matter of time before landmark decisions will change the face of trademark advertising in the search engines as we know it today.

What do you do for a living?  Let me guess… affiliate marketer, black hat marketer, brand siphoner?

There is only one “Best Buy” Electronics store and they have the two most prominent spots on the page. If a user clicks on any other links but the top two, then they probably deserve to end up where they end up.

A client like Best Buy only wants to pay just as much as it can to get that BestBuy.com URL to the top of the list. Trust me, they don’t care about those contextual ads.. of course until someone tells them it’ll make a significant amount of money off them.. then they’ll spend that extra cash.
Maybe they dont want to pay more to fill up more space with one freakin’ web site.

At the very least, Yahoo needs to fall in line with Google to eliminate the use of another organization’s trademarks in the title and text of search engine ads.