I was recently contacted by one of my competitors and they told me I was not allowed to use their domain name as a keyword for my adwords campaign. My ad did not contain anything that had to do with their website nor did it mention them. I see this done all the time and I am just wondering if they are right or not.
If you do not use the domain name in your ad, then you are ok. However, if you use the domain name, this could create a trademark infringement and you are illegal.
This is an infringement as you did not obtain there consent before sing the domain name for your keywords. Best bet is to seek legal advice.
I believe it's even against Adwords policy but I'd have to dig for a reference. A couple of links. Looks like they're more interested in the problem if the keyword is actually trademarked: http:// groups.google.com/group/adwords-help-basics/browse_thread/thread/9594706451e277a4/321d22b2cb8cb3c0?lnk=gst&q= http:// groups.google.com/group/adwords-help-guidelines/browse_thread/thread/17dd97871695e18d http:// adwords.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=6118
And that's essentially the answer here. Is the domain name indeed being used as a trademark? Domain names don't equal trademarks unless used as one.
If you really want your competitors customers and they run adsense on their site. Just go into the Google filters and then you can specify that you want your site on their site and then just run the ads ONLY on there...LOL....Done that before.