Court Clears Confusion Regarding Keyword Ads And Metatags

Jan 9, 2007 | 888 views | by Navneet Kaushal
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The key point of  Eastern Pennsylvania's ruling on J.G Wentworth SSC Ltd v. Settlement Funding LLC case, is that the use of keyword-triggered ads and keyword metatags can be a case of duping if the resulting ads/search results don't display the plaintiff's trademarks. However, the court wisely differentiated between the use of logos and keywords for indicative purposes.

This ruling has eventually brought an end to consumer's confusion on Keyword Ads and Metatag.Hence, the keywords in the Google AdWords, Yahoo! SM account or keyword meta tags at the top of HTML pages are not an infringement attack.

Traffic.com gives a fine example to make it more clear: "If you owned clickstream data, as all of the major website properties (Google, Microsoft, Yahoo) do, you'd already have a very good idea of which consumers had, in the past, visited (say) the BMW site, or searched for "BMW". If you knew this, you could show them your ads at a later time in their surfing travels. Is that legal? As long as the privacy policies are disclosed, it sure is. It's called "targeting." What if you don't own that clickstream data? Shouldn't you be allowed to benefit from the same phenomenon, by participating in a system that works similarly?"

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Navneet Kaushal

About the author:

Navneet Kaushal, CEO PageTraffic is a trusted authority in the search engine marketing industry. He is a featured author at Web Pro News, Search Newz, Promotionworld, Website Notes, DevWebPro, SEO Article and Web Help Now among many others. Follow Navneet Kaushal on Google +.

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{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }

aw4p January 11, 2007 at 05:49

What do you mean by “the use of keyword-triggered ads and keyword metatags can be a case of duping if the resulting ads/search results don’t display the plaintiff’s trademarks.”

To be honest, that comment doesn’t mean anything to me but, if I’m reading it correctly, what you’re saying is, essentially, the may be legal problems if you’re using another’s trademark as a keyword if the search results, etc. don’t display the trademark holder’s trademark.

If that’s what you’re trying the say, then the court’s holding was actually very different, as I explain in my blog post:

http://aw4law.blogspot.com/2007/01/trademarked-keywords-dont-lead-to.html

Ian

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