In defence of typos, if Google can, why can’t we?
Everyone tend to agree Google is one the most ethically correct company on the world.
So, we must all copycat Google’s behaviour and attitudes online, right? Wrong!
Google believes in the importance of law and order. It is a powerful means to an overarching end, as far as Rescuecom CEO David Milman was concerned. His company faced Google in court, and accused the search company of infringing on its trademark by selling it to competitors as a keyword (AdWords) to generate their advertising. Rescuecom, as many, many others before them, lost the suit.
Trademark law as it is currently written clearly prohibits using someone else’s trademark in an advertisement for your products or services. Imagine that you go into a store and ask for an Apple iPod, and they bring you a Sony Walkman that looks kind of like an iPod (because they are being paid by Sony to do so), with no indication that it’s not an Apple, clearly this misrepresentation would be unacceptable… offline. But not online!
Google law is online law. Thus it is correct to use a trade mark keyword as an AdWord keyword and present people with results from products that are direct competitors to that trademark. Google has proven that millions of times on court.
If Google can, why can’t we? Why can’t we, Black Hat Domainers, have the right to use typos? I don’t go as far as Google and ask for the right to use Nike.com just because I registered it first, but why can’t I use Niike.com? The principle here is the same Google’s Adwords use. To attract people looking for Nike.com to our Niike.com and earn some bucks from it.
Why WIPO does always decides against us? As many times in life and what is becoming a common place on the end of my posts, it depends on which side the bigger corporation is. That side always wins.
No, I am not a communist, but its things like this that gives us “the droit” to do our Black Hat stuff.