Is it legal for a site to use another site's URL as the title for their PPC ad? I was goofing around today and discovered McAfee is using one of my domain names as the title for one of it's AdWords ads. I'm not sure I'm happy about this.
From what is sounds like most likely an affilate is using your address to gain customer who might have been yours? As far as I know this is legal although I'm not totally sure.
Would it fall under "intellectual property infringement"? Certainly, if you URL contains your business name, and it's trademarked, then Google can step in... https://adwords.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=6118&query=competitor&topic=&type=f&onClick=
I wouldn't do it just because of integrity if you are lying to your customers I don't think its a good idea at all. Build your company on your own name it will make you feel much better if your company does succeed
The ad was not for an affiliate. It was definately McAfee. They are apparently hawking some new "Is this site safe?" tool bar, and their PPC campaign strategy seems to involve grabbing whatever URL gets searched for and using it as the title. Eg: "xyz.com". Then the description says something like "Is XYZ.com safe? Click here to find out". My site checks out as safe (of course), but it bothers me that they create the element of doubt in a searchers mind and only lay that fear to rest when their ad is clicked. Is this a really serious issue that I'm going to file a lawsuit over? Most definately not! It does bother me enough that I will continue to not recommend their products to anyone though. I'll have to ponder whether I really want to go through the hassle of filing and intelectual infringement claim. I've never trademarked the name or the URL (I'm a very small fish), so all I could really do is ask them to change their strategy. I feel that'd be as likely as not getting wet whil epissing in the wind.