Tue 10 Apr 2007
No, Utah did not recently “ban keyword advertising” as Slashdot reported. They did, however, place some restrictions on it with the newly signed Trademark Protection Act. In short, companies in Utah can no longer legally buy keyword advertising on a competitor’s trademarked names. Satan’s spawn, Noni, cannot, for example, take out ads on the Devil’s vomitus, Xango. That is seen as “hijacking a trademark.”
Though I concede the value of trademarks, this Act opens the door for a particular type of exploitation: general vs specific comparison ads. Take the ever famous PC vs Mac ads. Because the word “PC” (short for personal computer and taken to mean an Intel driven computer running Windows) is general and not a trademark, Apple is free to lambast and ridicule PCs (and PC owners) all they’d like. A coalition of PC sellers in Utah, however, would be forbidden to take out Google ads on the word Apple for the purpose of airing retaliatory Mac vs PC ads. Does that seem fair?
References:
- http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/archives/005185.php
- http://senatesite.com/blog/2007/04/constitutionality-of-trademark.html
- http://senatesite.com/blog/2007/04/guest-blog-utah-trademark-protection.html
- http://senatesite.com/blog/2007/04/identity-theft-next-generation.html
- http://www.linksandlaw.com/adwords-google-keyword-lawsuit-France.htm
- http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=198800360
- http://blog.ericgoldman.org/archives/2007/04/utah_bans_keywo.htm
April 10th, 2007 at 8:23 am
It, in fact, does not seem fair. It’s another way to point out that nothing is perfect.
I don’t see why you brought up that a PC was connected to Intel. A PC only means Personal Computer, and is not in reference to the internal components of that computer; Intel, AMD, nVidia, or other.
–Will
April 10th, 2007 at 8:56 am
PCs run on Intel based x86 architecture. AMD is an Intel clone, right? nVidia does not, as far as I know make motherboards.
April 10th, 2007 at 9:59 am
Don’t Mac’s run on Intel based x86 architecture? Are they now PCs?
April 10th, 2007 at 10:03 am
hehehe. yeah, a lot of Mac people I’ve met like to say “Mac PC” and now that Macs moved away from Motorola to Intel, they’re starting to have a point.
April 10th, 2007 at 11:27 am
You should trademark RBDN.