A competitor is using our brand name. Help!

Hey Aunty B,
Recently on our Adwords campaign we noticed a smaller competitor was using our brand name, which is currently in trademark approval status and their ad heading was “(Our brand name) Sucks”.

We asked them kindly to take it down and not to use our brand name as it was currently in trademark approval and their message was slander.

Thanks,
Angry and Annoyed

Dear Angry and Annoyed,

I don’t think you are angry enough. In fact, I got so angry on your behalf, I called our SmartCompany lawyer, James Omond. He comes well credentialed, because if you Google Omond & Co you will see he is also a wine lawyer, which I admit is an oxymoron – all lawyers like wine – but is a wine lawyer going to charge as much as a hard-nosed corporate lawyer?

Anyway, he confirmed that we have every right to be mad as hell!

The first point he makes is that they infringed your trademark. From the early days of the internet going commercial, it has been well established that you can’t use competitors’ trademarks in your meta tags, or more recently in your search words.

The second is comparative advertising. This is a permitted use of competitors’ names – but the use must be genuine. In your case, it sounds like it is not, rather it is ‘misleading and deceptive’.

So the answer is that you can do something, which is to call in the legal attack dogs, to preserve the value of your trademark and your marketing spend.

Now, I don’t say that lightly because the last thing you want to do is defend the undefendable – or pay a cent of your hard-earned money to a lawyer (although the cushions in James Ormond’s beach house do need updating). But in this case, a few threats will do the trick and send your competitor a nasty reminder that they need to play by THE rules – not THEIR rules.

Good luck,
Your Aunty B

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