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....

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...

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...

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...

We analyze a large-scale randomized field experiment in which a search engine varied the prominence of search ads for 3.3 million US users: one group of users saw the status quo, while the other saw a lower level of advertising (with prominence of search ads decreased). Revealed preference data...

In its Proposal for a Digital Services Act (“DSA”), the European Commission highlighted the need for new transparency obligations to arrive at accountable digital services, ensure a fair environment for economic operators and empower consumers. However, the proposed new rules seem to focus...