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?

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