Duets Blog : Creativity and the Law: DuetsBlog

by Mark Prus of NameFlash^SM

Some of my name development clients are fans of long, keyword-rich names. Obviously the appeal of a search engine spotting your website is driving this approach.

Some of my naming clients are fans of short names that can be easily shared on Twitter.

Which approach is better?

I will confess I am a fan of short, memorable names. Steve Baird would agree. As Steve so eloquently puts it, “we live in a sound bite world.”

But I strongly believe that picking a name because it would be more attractive to search engines or because it is short enough to Tweet is a huge mistake. Any time you allow tactics to drive your strategy, you are heading down the road to ruin.

A far better approach is to hone your brand’s strategy and test it with consumers until you find the positioning that is going to make all the difference in your business, then develop a name. David Ogilvy once said "The results of your campaign depend less on how we write your advertising than on how your product is positioned." The same is true for your name. Spend time developing a positioning that rings the bell with consumers and then go find the perfect name that brings that positioning to life.

Sound like a difficult thing to do? Not really. I know I am biased by my 25+ years of experience in building great consumer brands, but this task is not difficult. Time consuming? Yes. At times painful? Yes. Expensive? Could be. But in the end, the process of honing the brand positioning and using that as a basis for name development will pay dividends for years to come.

If the name you choose ends up short enough to Twitter, then you may wish to include that tactic in your arsenal. If your name includes relevant keywords, so much the better! But please, don’t pick names because they work better with tactic A or Tactic B!

Your thoughts?

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We're not talking the foamed footwear Crocs® that Randall Hull wrote about in his What a Croc! post from a couple of weeks ago. Instead, we're talking slow cookers -- on this snow-capped Valentine's Day in the Twin Cities.

Every once in a while a stroll down the grocery store aisle leaves me surprised when I spot a federal registration symbol next to a word that I thought was a generic term for the goods or services in question. Today was such a day, when I noticed Sunbeam's Crock-Pot® The Original Slow Cooker appliance on the store shelf. Apparently I'm not alone in my surprise at the trademark status, given Wikipedia's acknowledgment that Crock-Pot is a trademark "often used generically in the USA" -- and Slo-Cooker is a trademark "often used generically in the UK."

It appears the Crock-Pot® trademark was originally registered back in 1972, and a couple of years ago federally-registered protection for the trademark was extended into a number of different classes of goods at the U.S. Trademark Office for a variety of different products, including food, and some cooking accessories. Last June, this logo was federally registered by Sunbeam, but it specifically disclaimed any exclusive rights in the descriptive phrase "The Original Slow Cooker":

I'm left wondering whether this is like the Rollerblade example, where it took the owner of the Rollerblade brand an entire decade to battle genericide by developing a commercially acceptable generic term (in-line skates) to couple with the brand.

Here are a few questions for marketing types to ponder and discuss: If you're Sunbeam, owner of the federally-registered Crock-Pot® trademark, do you care if retailers and your direct competitors call their competing products a Crock-Pot too? What about Search Engines selling Crock-Pot as a keyword, do you care about that? If so, how much do you care? Is it important enough to spend dollars on stopping these kinds of actions?

Just so no one is left out, here, for you trademark types out there, what steps would you take to avoid having the Crock-Pot® trademark invalidated on genericness grounds?

Same drill for the Bundt® trademark that Dan wrote about prior to the holidays.

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Millimeters apart on the label, miles apart in meaning. Yes, a few extra millimeters of blank space can make all the difference in the world for some brands. Especially when the brand name consists of two words, and the typical visual treatment has all letters appearing in identical size and style (all caps), and when compressing the words yields an unintended, unfavorable meaning. Take the above luxury skin care brand owned by La Mer Technology, one of the Estee Lauder companies.

Honestly, I'm not sure how, but a few weeks ago, I came across Felicia Sullivan's blog post "Covet Fall's Top 10 Beauty Indulgences" on The Huffington Post, featuring the above product image. I took a double take at the brand name, laughed out loud (initially thinking it was a spoof product), and after realizing it wasn't, I knew I couldn't resist writing about it.

Part of my due diligence involved questioning my wife about it, she being far more experienced in these kinds of matters. I was "kindly" informed that "anybody who is anyone" knows La Mer is a coveted luxury skin care brand. Since being educated, I now introduce my wife as anyone, and myself as no one. Ironically, you might say I fit at least one slang definition of "lamer" -- "a person who is out of touch with modern fads or trends, esp. one who is unsophisticated." There are other meanings too, that I suspect don't implicate the target market for $130 an ounce skin care products, or value-priced 16.5 ounce containers at $1,390. Just so you know, I also have come to know that anyone who knows anything about the French language knows La Mer means "the sea".

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Professors at the University of Pennsylvania and at UC Berkeley School of Law released a study this week conclusively titled "Americans Reject Tailored Advertising," suggesting that there is high resistance among individuals to tailored advertising on the Internet.  (Press release from Penn here, NYT coverage here.)  Although I have been unable to download a copy of the study, it apparently suggests that there is a desire for legislation in this area.  From the Penn press release:

The Berkeley-Annenberg team found that 92 percent of those polled agree there should be a law that requires websites and advertising companies to delete all stored information about an individual, if requested to do so.  Sixty-three percent believe advertisers should be legally required to delete information about their internet activity immediately, whether requested or not.

Apparently, these findings are not without controversy.  In March, a company called TRUSTe, a self-proclaimed "leading internet privacy services provider," released survey results suggesting that people are increasingly comfortable with being tracked on the Internet, and that they are really more annoyed by advertising that is irrelevant to their needs and wants. 

I have not had the chance to wade through both studies, each of which is based upon its own survey of about 1,000 individuals, but it seems to me simply from reading the press releases related to each that both studies suffer from problems of bias.  In addition, I ran across a headline this week that sales of Internet advertising are outpacing sales of TV advertising in the U.K.  I understand that this statistic is not directly on point:  it is U.K. data, not U.S. data, and it does not distinguish targeted ads from non-targeted ads.  Even so, it seems to me that whatever the studies and surveys supposedly say, or are designed to convey, there seems to be a rather robust market for advertising on the Internet.

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Sometimes the world hands you lemons, and sometimes it hands you lemonade . . . or free beer . . . or even free advertising.  What serendipity for the Bud Light, Red Stripe, and Blue Moon brands that the media's most recent tempest in a teapot has culminated in a "Beer Summit," and that it is being widely reported that the principals will quaff these three brews while finally solving the nation's proverbial race relations problems.  (The last clause of that sentence is hyperbole.)

While this occasionally happens--a commercial product being in the right place at the right time in a news cycle--the Internet adds a whole new dimension to the import of appellations like "Beer Summit."  (And, by the way, it is high time for some new hackneyed appellations in political reporting.  "___ Summit" or "___-gate" are quite tired for being applied to every controversy / scandal / kerfuffle / etc. that touches D.C. politics.)  So, imagine all the Internet searches occurring today for the "beer summit," and how that may impact an event like Beer Summit or a company like Summit Brewing Company, which, after news results, are generally the first and second hits in Yahoo, Google, and Bing search results for the string "beer summit."  Interestingly, Summit Brewing's website is generally the top hit for the search string "summit beer," so word order is relevant in search strategy.

Cheers!

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In April the FDA sent formal letters to a number of pharma companies warning them of their misleading paid search ads in Google. Essentially the FDA wants pharma brands to put their full name of their product and associated risks in the ad. The problem as stated by pharma companies is that these paid search ads in search engines are only 95 characters in length and there isn’t enough space to include the name and the risks, not to mention the benefits.

If you’ve been following the subsequent online discussion about these FDA letters, you’ll see that much of the debate is centered around the idea that the FDA suggestions may be making things more confusing for the consumer rather than helping them. Although there is the potential for the FDA to drive some unintended, consequences, it seems to me that there is some common sense interpretations of the FDA suggestions that are the right thing to do for all parties.

The unintended consequence most mentioned, is that forcing further requirements on pharma companies has reduced participation from them and thus opened the door for Canadian online pharmacies and natural supplements. If you do a drug search today, you’ll see this is already happening. (Side note: Google has a fairly responsive protocol for a brand to file trademark paperwork to stop other brands from using their trademark.)

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Time and time again we have had a client bring up the fact that one or more of their competitors is bidding on our client's trademarked or company-oriented keywords on the search engines. When this happens to our clients they cry fowl and often run to us with the question, can my competitors bid on my trademarked terms or name? Google says yes and no.

Yes, you can bid on another company's trademarked terms. After all, these are ads. If you're standing in an aisle at a store, you may see POP displays or store banners or coupons urging you to purchase one brand over another. Isn't this the same thing? As long as the ad or promotion does not convey anything negative about your competitor and does not mention the trademarked terms then it is okay.

Google's stance is that it wants you to have content on your site (within two clicks) that pertains to the keywords you are bidding on. They give you "credit", if you will, for having applicable content. If you don't have relevant content, the clicks get very expensive. Google does not see the value for the user - an ad pointing to a page that does not have content related to the ad is misleading to the user.

And no. Google has earmarked certain trademarked names as non-touchable by competitors.

This is an ongoing topic for discussion, especially after the American Airlines trademark cases. Some folks argue that you should be able to bid on a competitor's trademarked or branded keyword terms because these are ads. Others say, no, what is the use of a trademarked term if it is not enforceable? Even the search engines' views vary. Google says yes, in certain situations. MSN says yes but only if it is within their guidelines and does not infringe on a third party's trademark or rights. Yahoo says only if you are one of two types of sites - a reseller of the trademarked product/service or an informative site - but definitely not a competitor.

Where do you stand on targeting a competitor's brand within your PPC campaign?

—Ted Risdall, Risdall Marketing

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Remember what you were doing back in September 2006? 

Keyword ad trademark infringement lawsuits were being filed left and right (that hasn't changed much). The hot issue at the time: Does the sale (by a search engine) or purchase (by the competitor of a brand owner) of another's trademark -- as a search engine keyword -- constitute "use in commerce," a necessary element of a successful trademark infringement lawsuit?

Search engines and other defendants were hoping that the technical "no use" defense would permit a short-circuiting of these growing number of lawsuits. In fact, this hope was fueled on September 28, 2006 when Google had just prevailed in dismissing such a lawsuit brought by Rescuecom.

A federal district court in New York had dismissed the Rescuecom suit, saying that the sale of Rescuecom's trademark as part of Google's AdWords program did not constitute a "use in commerce," so there was no need to even consider the question of likely consumer confusion. For the next few years, other courts followed suit (mostly in NY) and similarly short-circuited and dismissed such claims.

As of last Friday, two and a half years after Google's initial win, and a full year after oral arguments were made to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, Rescuecom may be singing, "We're back!"

In reversing the September 2006 dismissal, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals found sufficient trademark "use" for the case to proceed, relying on Rescuecom's allegation that "Google displays, offers, and sells Rescuecom's mark to Google's advertising customers when selling its advertising services. In addition, Google encourages the purchase of Rescuecom's mark through its Keyword Suggestion Tool." As such, the Rescuecom case will proceed and is sent back to the federal district court in New York to determine "whether Google's actual practice is in fact benign or confusing."

The Trademark Blog provides a helpful link through Scribd to obtain a copy of the court's 15-page decision (including the 19-page Appendix) here.

Professor Eric Goldman's detailed analysis can be found at his Technology & Marketing Blog by clicking here. 

You might remember my keyword advertising post on DuetsBlog from a couple of weeks ago here.

Bottom line: It appears that this latest ruling will pave the way for decisions that actually rule on the critical likelihood of confusion question.

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Andy Rooney from CBS’ Sixty Minutes made famous, “Have you ever wondered?” The more basic threshold questions should have been, “Did you even notice?” and “Does anyone even care?” Mr. Rooney had a knack for making us take notice, perhaps after the fact, because we never cared to wonder, at least, before he asked in the first place. In the raging world of keyword advertising, all three burning questions are itching for answers, so here goes, in reverse order.

First, almost everyone cares about online keyword advertising today. In fact, the GEICO® caveman may be the only one that doesn’t, but GEICO corporate certainly does, given the large keyword trademark infringement lawsuit it had against Google®, discussed here. Keyword advertising is big business ($21.1 billion in 2007, click here for FTC report) for the search engines that sell the advertising (i.e., Google®, Yahoo!®, MSN®, ASK®, AOL®, Lycos®, and AltaVista®, among others). Given this, the FTC certainly cares and has even issued alerts on the subject. Domainers also care a great deal, as do others with more traditional business models that pay for preferred listing of their keyword ads. For proof that Utah seems to care the most about keyword ad regulation, click here. Last, but certainly not least, trademark owners care a lot about keyword advertising, especially when competitors purchase keywords that match or mimic their valuable trademarks. (For a detailed catalog and analysis of trademark litigation showing how much litigants and the courts care about keyword advertising, check out the Search Engines links on The Trademark Blog and Professor Eric Goldman’s Technology & Marketing Blog.) 

Second, as to the “did you even notice” question, it is a frightening statistic, but even as late as 2002, the FTC was warning search engines a “Consumers Union national survey found that 60% of Internet users had no idea that certain search engines were paid fees to list some sites more prominently than others in their search results.” This caused the FTC to recommend that search engines “clearly and conspicuously” disclose when paid-for placements appear among unbiased search results to avoid the potential for “consumer deception.” Even now, there still must be an appreciable number of reasonable consumers who have never noticed the subtle search engine phrases like “Sponsored Links,” and don’t know what they are, much less appreciate that certain search results obtain priority and top-line status because an advertiser has paid for it. What consumers actually notice and understand about the appearance of a search engine’s results-page will be critical in deciding “likelihood of confusion” in future keyword trademark cases. 

Finally, taking the first question last, “have you ever wondered” why your favorite search engine uses a phrase like “Sponsored Links” or a similar one, instead of more certain phrases like “Paid Advertisements” or “Paid Advertising Results”? If not, I’m predicting much attention will be given by litigants and the courts to search engine use of these discrete “sponsor”-type “notice” phrases. After all, if lawyers must prominently display the blunt “Advertising Material” phrase when soliciting certain people (“Sponsored Reading Material” simply won’t cut it), why is it that search engines are able to freely use seemingly ambiguous phrases like, “Sponsored Links” (Google® and AOL®), “Sponsored Sites” (MSN®), “Sponsor Results” (Yahoo!®), “Sponsored Results” (Ask® and Lycos®), and “Sponsored Matches” (AltaVista®)? They are ambiguous because they beg the question of “sponsored” by whom? Equally confusing is the fact that the federal trademark statute protects not only against “likelihood of confusion” as to source, but sponsorship too. As such, it is worth examining whether these curious “sponsor”-type “notice” phrases actually reduce confusion or magnify likely confusion as to sponsorship, at least. No doubt, a great deal of time and effort will be devoted to surveying how consumers understand these phrases, if it already hasn’t been done yet behind closed doors. 

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