As I keep researching for my Doctoral Thesis...
22. April 2012 — On February 16th Advocate General Pedro Cruz Villalón has published his opinion on C-523/10 Wintersteiger, a case concerning a jurisdictional matters referred by the Austria Supreme Court [OGH, 5.10.2010 17 OB 8/10s, Wintersteiger]. Just about two month later, on the 19 of April 2012, the ECJ…
15. Januar 2012 — Dear Readers, apart from all the people who supported me during my studies in the ‘brick and mortar world‘, I’d like to especially thank YOU for following my website. When I started doing my research in 2007 the question of the legality of keyword advertising appeared in Austria to be very …
24. September 2011 — The INTERFLORA case is based on a (seriously lengthy) reference containing 10 questions by the England and Whales high Court (EWHC) dated to May 2009. In the light of the ECJ’s Google France decisions in March 2009 the EWHC upon request by ECJ later reduced the number of questions in its refe…
6. September 2011 — Many great articles have been published on the topic of keyword advertising during the last couple of months, three of which are especially recommended for the readers of this blog: T Bednarz, Keyword Advertising Before The French Supreme Court and Beyond – Calm At Least After Turbulent Tim…
1. August 2011 — Microsoft’s search engine Bing.com is obviously currently testing a new layout which includes advertisements among its search results while insufficiency labelling them as advertising. This practise is known as ‘paid inclusion’ or ‘keyword buying’ on could prove as a dangerous road to go for …
19. Juli 2011 — The German Federal High Court on Civil matter (BGH) ruled in early January that the booking of a sign identical to a trademark to trigger ads for similar products or services does not infringe TM law as long as the text of the ad does not contain the TM and the Display-URL points to a third-p…
4. Juli 2011 — Most users will have noticed that Google’s search engine results page recently received a decent overhaul. One of the many things that has changed is the Instant Preview Function. This function allows users t ‘preview’ the website of a search result or an linked-to ad. Preview has been availa…
25. Mai 2011 —In connection with his reply to a post from one week ago ananalysing the Instant Preview function for ads on Google, Dr. Stephan Ott has pointed out a very interesting German decision by the OLG Frankfurt (OLG Frankfurt a.M. 23.2.2011, Az. 6 W 111/10) concerning the mouseover function. To see …
24. Mai 2011 — As reported by the Google Inside AdWords Blog, from the 17th of May on Google has been showing parts of the ad’s Display-URL as a part of the title of some of their Top-Ads. The URL is being displayed without the www.-prefix or subdirectories and separated from the rest of the title by a ve…
3. Mai 2011 — Google’s Instant Preview function for ads might have a significant impact onto the questions whether text-ads are infringing TM-rights as users of this function are shown a preview of the advertiser’s website even before they may click on the ad. Without much celebration Google launched the i…
10. April 2011 — At the Google AdWords workshop in Brno I was given the chance to hold a presentation about the legal aspects of keyword advertising and to discuss some of the aspects (e.g. increase of the importance of law of unfair competition) with a very interested audience. I’d like to especially thank t…
28. März 2011 — The Austrian Supreme Court in a recent decision (OGH, 18.01.2011, 17 Ob 16/10t, Schladming.com) has slightly liberalized its very strict practise concerning the registration of names of cities as domains. Although the court stuck with its previous rulings according to which the content of t…
25. März 2011 — Advocate General Jääskinen delivered his opinion on the 24th of March on the 7th ECJ Keyword Advertising case: C-323/09 Interflora Inc Interflora British Unit v Marks & Spencer plc Flowers Direct Online Limited. Other than reported in some newspapers the author can’t see a big ‘win‘ for T…
17. Februar 2011 — Microsoft recently announced that they will from March 3rd on not prevent advertisers in the USA and Canada from booking third party trademarks as keywords on its adCenter platform. adCenter delivers keyword ads to Microsoft’s search engine Bing as well as to Yahoo! (the ‘Search Alliance‘).…
11. Februar 2011 — As reported by Searchengineland Google has changed the background colour of their Top-Ads from light purple back to the yellow layout it had used before. After being initially light blue (… – early April 2007), then yellowish (mid April 2007 – July 2010) and even purple for some time (July …
10. Februar 2011 — A reader was so kind to point out that Facebook is just about to introduce a feature called “Sponsored Stories“. This service allows advertisers to add visibility to certain pieces of user-generated information. As a result the fact that person “A” checked into a certain restaurant together…
8. Februar 2011 — On the 19th of November the Paris Civil Court of Second instance found that Google AdWords in Google France v Syndicat français de la literie has not infringed TM-rights and was furthermore as a (hosting) provider exempted from liability.This comes as a big surprise, taking into account the…
7. Februar 2011 — Google announced on the 3rd of February that Top-Ads (these are the ads shown above the -organic- search results and placed on a coloured background) will be shown in a slightly different style in the future. Ads on Google are shown in a layout that is different from the layout of the (org…
4. Februar 2011 — This post aims to provide a brief insight into some of the issues discussed at the conference “Suchmaschinen zwischen Informationsfreiheit und Wissensmacht“ (‘Search Engines between Freedom of Information and the Power of Knowledge‘) held at the Georg-August University of Göttingen on the 28th …
10. Januar 2011 — Almost unnoticed the Austrian Supreme Court of Justice (OGH, 5.10.2010, 17 Ob 8/10s, Wintersteiger) has referred a request for a preliminary ruling to the ECJ related to the topic of Keyword Advertising. The court furthermore also provided an interesting insight whether or not it would see …
29. Dezember 2010 — What is the connection between the booking of signs identical with a trademark as a keyword and the impact of advertising on consumer behaviour? Pretty much none in my opinion. About a month a go I was surprised to find a passage about keyword advertising buried somewhere towards the end of…
21. Dezember 2010 — The OLG Braunschweig is well know among German lawyers for being very trademark-owner friendly and the ECJ’s Google France ruling obviously hasn’t changed much about this. In a recent decision the court found, dissenting from the former BGH PCB-ruling, that users when entering a trademark as …
20. Dezember 2010 — By accepting payments for the display of extra in information (‘tags‘) in its (‘integrated’) search results, Google is, strictly speaking, displaying ads within its list of natural search results and thus breaking a long-lasting habit. Although the payment does not influence the ranking of th…
29. November 2010 — I am glad to announce that the Oxford University Press has agreed to allow Dr. Ott and myself to link to the abstract, the full text (click the banner below) and even to the PDF version of our article published in the Journal of Intellectual Property Law and Practise. At this point I’d like…
11. November 2010 — About a month ago Google launched the ‘Instant Google‘ feature which rendered the ‘Search’-button kind of obsolete. While the ‘Instant Google’ feature might be highly interesting from an unfair competition law point of view (results are being shown already while the user is searching and thus…
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