In our field service industry, I often see competitors piggy backing on each other in their Adwords programs. They will initiate CPC campaigns targeting the specific name recognition of a competitor, in order to hijack those search results.
However, a recent development out of Israel, indicates that it might not be such a good idea…
It seems an Israeli doctor has recently sued Google – and won – in a world precedent setting case, after a Tel Aviv court agreed with his contention that the search engine giant had effectively allowed his competitors to hijack his reputationfor their benefit. As a result, Dr. Dov Klein, an eminent Israeli plastic surgeon, has been awarded NIS 50,000, plus NIS 10,000 in court costs.
Dr. Kleins attorney, Uri Savir, says that Google may be forced to make major changes to its Adwords platform in light of this story.
He said “This case has extensive ramifications, since Google has traditionally allowed the use of names as keywords for its search, and an advertiser is allowed to purchase the name of a competitor as an Adword (which is what happened to Dr. Klein). Thanks to this case, Google may find itself getting sued by many businesses because of what has been ruled illegal activity.
In this case, Klein discovered in 2007 that competitors of his – in particular, a large plastic surgery clinic – had purchased his name “Dr. Dov Klein” as an Adword, specifically in order to display their own ads on SERPS for his name. Klein subsequently sued, claiming that the competitors were seeking to leverage his hard fought reputation for their own financial gain. He argued that they were trying to monetize his own name (illegally).
