For well over a century, U.S. trademark law has afforded brand owners certain rights, remedies and obligations. As the Department of Commerce has noted, owners of trademarks have both a legal right and an affirmative obligation to protect their trademarks from unauthorized third-party use....

The typical scenario of keywording involves a trilateral structure of legal positions. The mark holder is the party that has trademark rights in the term that is used as a keyword. The search engine is the entity that provides search tools to Internet users, usually for free, helping them to...

In both the EU and the US, trademark owners have sued search engine operators for using their trademarks as triggers in competitive keyword advertising. EU and US courts have taken a different approach to search engine operator liability for such invisible keyword use. The article outlines these...

Keyword search advertising occurs when an advertiser pays a search engine to link a particular keyword to its website. Keywords are often trademarks and some mark owners have objected to the search engines' practice of selling their marks as keywords without permission. Trademark doctrine...

The Intellectual Property Laws (I.P. Laws) have, to a great extent, proved to be successful in nipping the copyright infringement in its bud. The I.P. Laws provide umbrella jurisprudence, which seek to protect the creativity of the authors. But despite that, it has been widely observed that the...

The impressive growth of online shopping has had a significant impact on firms’ strategies and customer behavior, bringing to the fore new forms of trademark exploitation that may affect competition. A prominent role is played by keyword advertising services provided by internet search...

In 2004 lanceerde Google een fabuleus boekendigitaliseringsproject dat de ambitie heeft om meer dan 30 miljoen boeken uit het literair werelderfgoed online beschikbaar te maken. Naast veel lofspraak lokte dit ‘Google Books Project' ook heel wat kritische reacties uit. Niet geheel onverwacht...