As I have just seen Lunarpages is advertising their offers under my company name on google adwords using my company name as their keyword... I did contact them and ask them to remove the ad. What else can I do ? Is it legal for them to do this ?

Well it may not be them doing it, it may be an affliliate. ;)

But they are legally responsible for what their affiliates do, are they ?

The ad is beeing linked to:
http://secure.lunarpages.com/tracking/cgi-bin/clickthru.cgi%3Fid%3D1064&sa=l

What would you do about it ?

Legally responsible for what their affliliates do? I don't think so since they are independantly contracted agents.

As for what would I do, contact Lunarpages about this. While they aren't legally responsible, I suspect they are a responsible company that will address this fairly. :)

Note: I am not a lawyer and all information given here is merely opinion and should not be used for any purpose for any reason. ;)

That's amazing, you included the affiliate tracking ID?
What's the keyword or your company name?

Lunarpages has thousands of affiliates since they pay $80 per sale. They also have no control over where these affiliates place their links. Also, Google's policy, in action yet or not I'm not sure (recently revised) is that any advertiser may bid on any trademarked term as long as the trademark is not in the ad text itself. There's nothing you can do here.

its a tough one, since i think dan is right.
Contact lunar pages, they are a good company, but they may side with the affiliate, especially if they are bringin in the bucks for them.
good luck!
:)

No it is not allowed to place ads under your competitors name. I know it because I did this too and had to pay $650 :(

ah yes and if you do it on purpose you go to prison at least here in Europe.
However, my name is not patented so it could be different here...

Do you have a trademark under your company name? (not a patent)

If you do, then you might have legal grounds (contact a lawyer first, though)...

>Do you have a trademark under your company name?

No... I just have a license to do business...

Google Drops Restrictions on AdWords (http://searchenginewatch.com/searchday/article.php/3340461)

Google, in response to the growing litigation involving the use of third party trademarks as keyword inventory within its AdWords program, has unveiled a new policy by which it disclaims any responsibility to monitor or restrict keywords for ads served within the U.S. and Canada. In other words: Sorry trademark holders, we're going to let anyone bid on the brand terms that you've spent so much money to establish with consumers.

Basically, Google doesn't regulate trademarks anymore, so there's nothing you can do to stop LunarPages affiliates from bidding on your site name except to attempt to sue them for trademark infringement yourself, although so far those cases against AdWords ads haven't been especially easy or successful.

About the only thing you can do is make the situation public (like you're doing) and let the people that read this decide if they want to do business with a company that practices this type of advertising campaign.

Some may not care one way or the other, then again some may think it's wrong to do and avoid the company...

Lunarpages does not advertise on adwords at this time.

I would have appreciated a personal email and for you to wait on resolution rather than posting accusations on the website that are unfounded.

We did eventually get an email and we asked for more information.

I would greatly request the name of this post be changed as Lunarpages IS NOT advertising under your keywords.

If we find that an affiliate is advertising against our terms of service that affiliate will be terminated.

Please reply to the email we received this morning and we will look into it.

I did respond two hours ago. Thanks.

The affiliate have been warned. I CC:ed you with the warning.

Please do not hesitate to contact me directly max@lunarpages.com if you have any more issues regarding our affiliates.

Thank you and we've taken care of the situation with the affiliate. I must reiterate that I think this post was a bit premature as well as misleading

I'm sorry but if you enter my company name on Google you get this message:

Lunar Pages Webhosting
Low cost web hosting packages.
$7.95/ 800MB & 40G transfer. Aff.
www.lunarpages.com

To me it looked pretty much like Lunarpages was placing an add under my company name. It was my impression and I had no doubt about it. I am located in Europe and do not know Lunarpages or that you have an affiliate program. When I accidently promoted my company under someone elses name I got a letter from a lawyer a day later asking me to pay 650 Dollars... Should I have told them that this behaviour was premature and misleading ??

I understand your position and I am grateful for your help but I do not feel like I did anything wrong. In fact other companies would have sued you without even sending you an email so I was rather fair actually. I am happy about how you are dealing with this but don't call that premature because I opended this thread because I had no doubt that you were placing ads under my name. Some guys call their lawyers...I open up a thread at Webhostingtalk. I do not feel like I did anything wrong because I couldn't know that it was an affiliate.

I don't think so. Most people will send an email to the "offending" company with the situation and notice to remove and then see what the response is.

What I take exception to is that you posted this accusation on a public forum without giving us the opportunity to respond. I just happened on this thread because I was looking through this forum.

Youstated yourself that you had no idea who were are, etc.

OK, fair enough...then email us and allow us the opportunity to reply before making a public accusation. Yes, I believe this thread is very much misleading.

The title is "Lunarpages is advertising under my keyword :( "

No, we are not. Thus, misleading.

>What I take exception to is that you posted this accusation on a
>public forum without giving us the opportunity to respond. I
>just happened on this thread because I was looking through
>this forum.

Have a look at that advertisement again. I had no doubt that this was you and there was no reason to believe it could be someone else.

>The title is "Lunarpages is advertising under my keyword :( "
>No, we are not. Thus, misleading.

It's about the same as when you say: "If you release a stone it falls down". You have no proof that this is true but you believe in what you see and I saw a Lunarpages advertisement and nothing pointing out it was an affiliate.

I didn't dispute the fact you thought it was us.

I am stating as a person in business....especially if it also happened to you...that there should be some courtesy extended to a fellow business person to resolve the situation.

If we ignored you or told you it was us ha ha sue us, then sure, put up the post that we were doing just that. But obviously, we are not.

Think about how the accusation affects us to a new person surfing these forums and only sees the title without bothering to read the text.

This is why I requested in our first correspondence that the title of this thread be changed as we are quite obviously not doing what you accused us of.

>I am stating as a person in business....especially if it also
>happened to you...that there should be some courtesy
>extended to a fellow business person to resolve the situation.

Well, you could tell this the guys who just sent me that 650 Dollar bill for using their keyword.

I would be willing to change the thread's title but it is not possible. Please ask the guys who operate this forum.

I don't see the distinction really, an affiliate is paid for sales and is a representative of the company they get paid by.

Can someone explain the difference between an affiliate advertising using keywords of your company name and the affiliate's company itself?

Actually, I'd love to and it sounds like a ploy to get you to pay in order to avoid a legal issue that would likely not have come to anything.

Did you get a release that they would not pursue legal action after you paid them this?

Originally posted by Kathleen|LP
Actually, I'd love to and it sounds like a ploy to get you to pay in order to avoid a legal issue that would likely not have come to anything.

Did you get a release that they would not pursue legal action after you paid them this?

Actually they did not only not release that they would pursue legal action, I also had to sign a contract saying that if I do it again I have to pay a penalty of more than 5000 Dollars. I'm a lawstudent myself. Also I contacted a lawyer regarding this and he and everyone at my university told me to pay that fee and sign that contract because otherwise they would have sued me and then I would have had to pay the lawsuit as well. Still its pretty rough because when I received their letter I had already removed the advertisement days ago and I didn't even know that I was even using it but I had a list of keywords saved on my hard drive and I really must have used it somewhen. They could have sent me an email but their lawyer wrote they were sending this thing in order to be more secured against me.

And also they do have a legal right on that 650 Dollar fee for not suing me. That means suing me in order to get me to sign that contract... It does not mean they can not sue me for harm caused by using the keyword but I hope they will not do this because I've paid now.

As soon as I have like 10.000 bucks left I know I will invest it in a trademark and ask a lawyer to legally secure anything that I am doing online.

Originally posted by Kathleen|LP
I would have appreciated a personal email and for you to wait on resolution rather than posting accusations on the website that are unfounded.now that's funny. these forums thrive on unfounded accusations (just look in Web Hosting Forum (http://www.webhostingtalk.com/forumdisplay.php?s=&forumid=1)). if everyone stopped doing it, all you would hear around here are crickets and tumbleweeds.

Originally posted by doug brave
Actually they did not only not release that they would pursue legal action, I also had to sign a contract saying that if I do it again I have to pay a penalty of more than 5000 Dollars. It's not at all clear in the current legal environment whether they'd win a case like that or not. As the article linked to earlier points out, there are some pending court cases on it.

That doesn't mean you didn't do the right thing in making a settlement, because if you found liable for trademark infringment the cost would have been a lot more. But the point is that it hasn't yet been clarified whether displaying your ads in response to searches on someone else's competitive terms actually is infringement (as opposed to actually using those trademarked terms in your ad, which clearly would be).

I'm going to link to that article at SearchEngineWatch again, because it is essential reading for anyone interested in this either casually or as a party:

http://searchenginewatch.com/searchday/article.php/3340461

Note that the article also has a link to Google's page on their trademak complain procedure (http://www.google.com/tm_complaint.html), which would be the place to go if someone is using your keywords (and doesn't stop in response to a direct request, which would be the reasonable first step).

>That doesn't mean you didn't do the right thing in making a
>settlement, because if you found liable for trademark
>infringment the cost would have been a lot more. But the point
>is that it hasn't yet been clarified whether displaying your ads in
>response to searches on someone else's competitive terms
>actually is infringement (as opposed to actually using those
>trademarked terms in your ad, which clearly would be).

That might be true in the US or where you are. However, in my country (Germany) it is absolutely clear that using a competitor's name as a keyword is an infrigment.