Choose Your Words Carefully

Competitor pay per click campaigns where a company bids for the name of a rival in the hope that a customer or client who searches for a particular company will not notice when a similar company, rather than the company they selected, appears in the search suggestions. This practice has always been regarded as a little underhand.

In a tit-for-tat case involving two plumbing firms who had both been trading since 2001 the question of keyword advertising involving a rival's company name was considered when both firms had been employing the practice of bidding for each other's name.

Victoria Plum (formerly Plumb) Limited –v- Victorian Plumbing Limited, the similarity of the companies names makes it abundantly clear that there is a propensity for confusion between the two firms. Victorian Plumbing Limited had mounted a pay-per-click campaign and had been bidding for the keywords - Victoria Plum and variations of the name - on Google the result of which was designed to